0:00

Michael. Peter. What do you know about

0:02

organized retail crime? I

0:04

think it's time that we finally bring the

0:07

focus back to the real victims, someone

0:09

who has to ask a retail employee to unlock

0:11

the Gillette Mach 3.

0:12

Before we get going,

0:15

I'm going to send you a

0:18

YouTube clip. Oh?

0:29

This is from Good Morning America. Oh, no. From

0:32

a couple months ago. OK.

0:34

We're just going to watch the first minute

0:36

and a half or so of this. So let

0:38

me know

0:39

when you want to count it down. Vibesetters.

0:43

My YouTube settings are all on 2x speed, so

0:45

I have to make sure it's on normal. It's ruined.

0:47

It's absolutely fucking ruined human interaction

0:50

for me. I need you to

0:52

go faster and speak in a bizarre, frantic

0:55

monotone. OK.

0:59

Back now with a new warning about a surge in organized

1:01

retail crime. Stores are losing big money, raising

1:03

prices to cover it. And the greatest cost

1:06

could be to the safety of workers. Errol Reshef

1:08

here with the details. Good morning,

1:09

Errol. Good morning to you, George. Retailers we talked

1:11

to are losing billions of dollars

1:13

to organized retail crime. And authorities

1:16

are warning that this has become an absolute

1:18

threat to public safety, with violent gangs,

1:21

dangerous international crime rings, and even

1:23

groups with suspected ties to terrorism

1:25

increasingly getting involved. Peter.

1:28

You've seen the videos of brazen smash

1:31

and grabs at many different retailers across

1:33

the country. And federal authorities are

1:35

now sounding the alarm about coordinated

1:38

robberies like

1:39

these. It's an absolute

1:41

threat. It's called organized retail

1:43

crime, where groups of criminals steal

1:45

high value items to then sell online

1:48

or elsewhere.

1:49

They know exactly what stores to hit, when,

1:51

and where. Obviously, the profitability is the

1:53

key here. Retailers say this type of

1:55

crime is reaching unprecedented levels,

1:58

forcing the average family to. pay an

2:00

estimated $500 more each year on goods. Are

2:04

you seeing a dramatic rise in this type

2:06

of crime? Absolutely. It's growing double

2:08

digit year over year. Double digit year over year. And

2:10

Homeland Security officials tell ABC News they

2:12

now see violent gangs and dangerous

2:15

international groups getting involved. Organizations

2:18

suspected of ties to drug trafficking

2:20

or even terrorism financing.

2:22

These criminal networks, they may be full-time

2:24

drug traffickers that see an opportunity

2:27

to work with a crew that's already stealing.

2:31

That's

2:31

a crew. Oh man, the

2:33

amount of facts in that

2:35

minute and a half of good morning America

2:38

that are objectively made up. Yeah,

2:41

we need to do like a frame by frame analysis.

2:44

This is like a narrative

2:46

that is all over the place in

2:48

our sort of media ecosystem, right?

2:51

There is sort of like this underlying, very

2:53

simple narrative, right? Shoplifting

2:56

is out of control and the

2:59

heart of the problem is organized

3:01

retail crime. There's

3:04

a ton of discourse around San

3:06

Francisco as like the epicenter

3:09

of it. In May of 2021, the

3:11

New York Times ran an article

3:13

titled San Francisco's Shoplifting

3:15

Surge. And then later in the year,

3:18

the Wall Street Journal ran one titled, San

3:20

Francisco has become a shoplifter's

3:22

paradise. Walgreens

3:24

announced that they were closing locations in

3:27

San Francisco due to the issue. Target

3:29

made public statements to investors about

3:31

their concerns about theft across the

3:34

country. The New York Post published

3:36

a story titled, The Shoplifting

3:38

Epidemic Taking Over America. Police

3:41

departments are making statements and

3:45

to really heighten

3:47

the drama, there has

3:49

been like a consistent stream of viral

3:52

surveillance footage videos of

3:54

groups of people, usually teenagers,

3:57

doing smash and grab robberies, They

4:00

bust into a store all at once, ransack

4:02

the place, grab everything they can, run out.

4:05

It was very funny in this clip where they're like, they

4:08

know exactly when to hit the stores. First

4:10

of

4:10

all, it's not even clear that that's like true. And

4:12

secondly, it doesn't take a lot of coordination to do

4:15

that. It's just like, yeah, you'd probably go during the day when

4:17

there's fewer

4:17

employees. Yeah, like after school.

4:19

Yeah, it doesn't mean you're like

4:22

a criminal mastermind.

4:22

So you have all

4:24

of this reporting that's sort of about

4:27

shoplifting.

4:29

And then it's also about these smash and grab robberies.

4:31

And then they just sort of speculate about

4:34

organized retail crime, meaning

4:36

like organized crime rings that

4:38

target retailers. Could it be Al-Qaeda?

4:41

Unclear. We don't know. The weird

4:44

thing about this whole

4:46

like organized retail crime, shoplifting

4:48

out of control narrative, is that there's

4:51

basically no real evidence that

4:53

any of it is true. So let's

4:55

look at the stats here and let's start with basic

4:58

shoplifting. Everyone everywhere

5:00

seems to be saying that shoplifting, especially

5:02

in California, is out of control.

5:05

In late 2021, CNN published

5:07

an article that said, quote, San Francisco

5:09

has seen a surge in crime since it reopened

5:12

in the pandemic. In the central district,

5:14

for example, larceny and theft incidents

5:17

are up almost 88% from a

5:19

year earlier. Oh, during the pandemic when everyone

5:21

was fucking inside?

5:23

Am I stealing your, did I spoil it? Well,

5:26

no, I paused so that you could basically piece

5:29

together. Okay, you knew I was going to have a little outburst

5:31

there. What has to be the most obvious

5:33

conclusion you could draw from looking

5:36

at that data, it's

5:38

May 2021 and you're like, larceny is

5:40

up 88%. Of

5:42

course it's up. Stores

5:45

weren't open a year ago. Bar fights

5:47

were probably up like 1000% because people could

5:49

go to bars for a year. The

5:52

comparison you need to make is

5:54

between 2021 and 2019. And

5:57

if you look at those numbers in that same

5:59

central. district in San Francisco, Larceny

6:02

was down 14%. It increased in 2022, but the number

6:04

is still below where

6:09

it was in 2019, which

6:11

is itself below where it was in 2018. And

6:13

the same is true across San Francisco.

6:18

Now, the 2021

6:20

shoplifting rates in all of California

6:22

were well below the pre-pandemic

6:25

rates. There was a 29% spike in 2022 as like reopening continued, but

6:27

it's still below pre-pandemic

6:33

levels. But if you look

6:35

at just San Francisco itself, there

6:37

actually is an increase. The

6:39

raw number of shoplifting reports in 2022 is about 19%

6:41

higher than it was in 2019. It's

6:46

actually pretty significant. It is. So I saw that

6:48

and I thought, okay, simple enough. The

6:51

New York Times wrote their piece about

6:54

the shoplifting surge in May 2021. That

6:57

was basically fictional, but a

7:00

year later or so, they have somehow stumbled

7:02

into the truth. The fears of a widespread

7:05

shoplifting epidemic might be

7:07

bullshit, but if you look at San

7:09

Francisco, there is a noticeable spike.

7:12

Open and shut, or so I thought until

7:15

I started digging in further. The

7:18

average number of monthly reported shoplifting

7:20

incidents in San Francisco collapsed

7:22

during the pandemic, of course, starts

7:25

steadily rising as things open up in 2021. But

7:27

then in September 2021, the number doubles. Okay.

7:33

So a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle

7:35

takes a look at the data and they realize that

7:37

nearly all of that increase comes from a single

7:40

target downtown. In

7:42

August of 2021, it reported 13

7:46

shoplifting incidents in September 154,

7:48

which was about 40% of the total

7:53

shoplifting incidents in San Francisco

7:55

that month. So what

7:57

happened? Was there one matter? incident

8:00

where they hit by a ring? No,

8:03

what happened was that that target

8:05

changed their reporting system to one

8:07

that resulted in more reports to police. So

8:11

a blogger poked around and found

8:13

at least one other instance of this where a single

8:16

Safeway in November of 2021

8:18

jumped from one shoplifting

8:21

incident per month to 120. So

8:25

if you control for these outlier stores,

8:28

the spike in shoplifting in San Francisco

8:30

that began in late 2021 and

8:32

has carried through to the present actually

8:35

goes away. We'll talk

8:37

in a bit about like what data we

8:40

can rely on and can if there's anything

8:42

concrete. But I think it's safe

8:44

to say two things. One,

8:47

the police data is trash. Two,

8:50

to the extent you can rely on it, there's

8:52

no reason to believe that there's been a shoplifting

8:55

spike in San Francisco or anywhere else.

8:57

Right, at the most basic level,

8:59

it's like this isn't based on like an

9:01

actual credible spike in shoplifting.

9:03

It's based mostly on vibes. It's

9:07

also pretty funny that that Safeway only had one incident

9:09

of shoplifting before they changed their reporting. It just

9:11

shows the whole thing is fucking faked up. One hundred and fifty

9:13

members also fake. The whole thing is fake. We just don't

9:15

know. So despite all of the media coverage, police,

9:18

corporate executives all saying theft is

9:20

up.

9:21

There's really no data showing that theft is up.

9:23

And the most reliable data that we have indicates

9:26

that it's not. Not only that, but

9:28

the media panic started at a time when

9:30

shoplifting was demonstrably down, not

9:33

up. So like what is going

9:35

on here? I think the easiest explanation

9:37

is social media, right? We get these viral videos

9:40

of these smash and grab robberies creates

9:43

a sensation that there is something unusual

9:45

happening. That's probably part of it. I think that's

9:47

probably a big part of why this

9:49

sort of messaging has been effective. But

9:53

it doesn't really explain why the messaging

9:55

exists to begin with. When I was researching

9:58

this, one organization kept popping. up,

10:00

the National Retail Federation.

10:02

I mentioned them once earlier. This is the country's

10:05

largest retail trade association.

10:07

They conduct annual surveys

10:10

of retailers that encompass all sorts of issues,

10:13

but they are very focused on security.

10:16

They are also a major lobbying

10:19

organization. They lobby for corporate

10:21

tax cuts, they lobby against minimum

10:23

wage increases, and they lobby for

10:25

aggressive law enforcement.

10:28

So if you notice, we haven't even really talked about organized

10:30

retail crime, right? This is sort of

10:33

two mysteries wrapped up in one. Why

10:35

is everyone freaking out about shoplifting

10:37

when there's no real evidence that it's getting worse? And

10:40

second, why does every article about shoplifting

10:42

also mention organized retail crime?

10:45

And I think the answer to all of this is

10:48

retail lobbying. So the

10:50

term organized retail crime has

10:52

been around for a while, but it seems

10:54

to have been popularized by the National Retail

10:57

Federation. Every year they put out

10:59

a report on organized retail crime,

11:01

and almost all of the data about

11:03

it that you read about in the media comes from

11:06

those reports. So I read the

11:08

latest report,

11:09

and Mike, buckle up. Okay,

11:12

okay. So

11:14

they do define organized retail crime,

11:16

which unfortunately I am going to start calling ORC.

11:20

Orcs. The study defines ORC

11:22

as the systemic large-scale theft

11:24

of retail goods from manufacturers,

11:27

logistics, and transportation providers, distributors,

11:30

or retailers, and the subsequent resale

11:33

of stolen goods for financial gain

11:35

to wholesalers, retailers, or individual

11:37

consumers, typically for a

11:39

fraction of the retail cost. I have

11:41

some comments, but I'll let you go. I do think that

11:44

these criminal operations

11:47

exist. Yeah.

11:59

the focus on the resale, I

12:02

feel like people have this narrative like, oh, they're

12:04

stealing things to resell them, but that's

12:06

most stealing. I mean,

12:08

somebody steals your car stereo, they're not putting

12:10

it in their car. People steal

12:12

jewelry, they're reselling it. So

12:15

most theft is resold. The

12:18

fact that it's resold and that

12:20

people are doing this to resell it and get

12:22

money isn't exotic

12:24

in any way. I know people online

12:27

can get somewhat overboard

12:29

with the sort of like poor people stealing a loaf

12:31

of bread.

12:32

Right, right. So the lame is

12:34

narrative. Yeah, I do

12:35

actually think that you

12:38

don't have to steal man the

12:40

kind of shoplifting that's going on because

12:42

poor

12:42

people also steal things to resell

12:45

them because they're poor. Crimes

12:47

of poverty do not have to be like, I'm

12:50

stealing food to feed my starving children.

12:52

It can be like I'm stealing a car stereo

12:55

to sell it for 300 bucks to pay my rent.

12:58

That's also a crime of poverty. The fact that you've resold

13:00

something doesn't invalidate

13:03

the fact that it's partly driven by poverty.

13:05

And I think increasingly addiction, I mean, we have a huge

13:08

like opioids mess everything

13:11

epidemic in most cities at this point. Yeah,

13:13

later in the Good Morning America segment,

13:16

they start talking about fentanyl and that's when I was like, all

13:18

right, we've

13:20

gotten too far field. I'm not going to show Mike this part.

13:22

Touch candy bars. Don't touch fentanyl. Okay,

13:24

I'm going through the report and one of the

13:26

first things you'll

13:28

see

13:29

is that the gaps in their understanding

13:31

here are massive. They say quote,

13:34

national crime data on ORC does not

13:36

exist. And most law enforcement

13:38

authorities do not specifically track ORC

13:41

as a specific category of crime. Okay.

13:44

Yes, they did use specific twice in a row in there

13:47

in this report. And the report is just sort

13:49

of like riddled with like mediocre writing in

13:51

a way that I'm not used to for like an official

13:54

looking report. Are you not

13:55

used to that Peter? Because they're

13:58

in this whole podcast. I feel like when

13:59

When you open a big fancy like

14:02

report that's like 50 pages long in a,

14:05

you know, professionally graphically

14:07

designed PDF, you sort

14:09

of expect a certain level of quality

14:11

and this one is on the lower end.

14:14

Put it that way. They say that

14:17

ORC incidents are up, but their

14:19

only data about the prevalence of it comes

14:21

from retailers themselves

14:23

and there are a couple of very large problems

14:25

with that data. There's

14:28

not a clean definition of it to begin with, right? And

14:30

retailers are each working with their own

14:32

definitions. So some retailers will

14:34

consider any group of shoplifters to technically

14:37

be organized. And I've seen

14:39

some indications that some will base

14:41

it purely on the amount stolen.

14:44

Basically assuming like if you're stealing X amount,

14:47

you're reselling it, which they then

14:49

count as organized retail crime. But

14:51

there's no consistent standard. The

14:53

second problem here is that

14:56

as organized retail crime has gotten

14:58

more attention, retailers have invested

15:01

more in stopping it. So the report

15:03

shows that increasing percentages

15:06

of retailers have dedicated

15:08

ORC teams within their

15:10

like loss prevention departments

15:13

or whatever. So yes, they're finding

15:15

more instances of it, but that could very

15:17

easily be because they're now looking for it.

15:20

Some of their stats are also just plainly

15:23

wrong.

15:24

And God,

15:25

this is a wild one. They claim that

15:27

nearly half of all retail

15:30

shrink is through organized

15:32

retail crime. That

15:34

jumped out to me because numbers from their

15:37

own surveys have reported that

15:39

external theft, including organized

15:41

retail crime, was about 37% of all shrink. And

15:45

now they're saying that organized retail crime

15:48

alone is nearly half. So

15:50

I was like, well, what the fuck is this? They

15:53

get it by taking their

15:56

own estimate of annual retail shrink,

15:58

which you might remember was 94 billion.

17:44

It's

18:00

not like this is a coincidence or like some sort

18:02

of honest mistake. Like it's very clear

18:05

that the retailers and the cops

18:08

are like trying to put out a narrative.

18:10

So Ben Dugan, aside

18:12

from being a CVS executive, works for

18:14

another trade association called the Coalition

18:17

of Law Enforcement and Retail. Right.

18:20

And that just goes to show how

18:23

tightly these organizations

18:25

are operating with fucking cops. Right.

18:28

And there actually is cops at the top of

18:30

like these, you know, large corporations

18:32

security divisions. It's just like former cops,

18:35

right? Right. It's not uncommon that

18:37

these retail organizations are just

18:39

like making these blatant misrepresentations.

18:41

A couple of years ago, the head of the

18:43

California Retailers Association

18:46

said that businesses in San Francisco

18:49

and Oakland alone lose $3.6 billion annually

18:52

to organize retail crime. Right.

18:58

And the Financial Times was looking at this and

19:00

they pointed out that would be 25% of all

19:03

sales in San Francisco

19:05

and Oakland. So no. No.

19:08

No. Journalists should

19:10

be looking at this as if like the Westboro Baptist

19:12

Church is like there are teachers molesting

19:15

kids everywhere. You wouldn't just report

19:17

that. You'd be like, well, these people are obviously fucking

19:19

full of shit. We're going to wait until there's

19:21

actual evidence of this, right? Yeah. And

19:23

the Westboro Baptist Church has never lied to Congress. You would

19:25

want people to like conclude

19:28

something from this

19:29

and be like, look, maybe this is happening. Maybe

19:32

it's not. But like there's huge bad faith actors at the very center

19:34

of this and they need to come with actual

19:37

facts to us before we're going

19:39

to believe them. And until they do, the

19:41

story is the retail lobby

19:43

is trying to push a narrative for which there's

19:46

no evidence. We're partway through the

19:48

most serious report in

19:50

the business about organized retail crime

19:53

and it is nonsense.

19:54

Yeah. In the report,

19:56

they say, quote,

19:57

the lack of quality data has

20:00

stymied efforts to raise public awareness

20:02

about the scale and consequences

20:04

of ORC. No, it hasn't.

20:07

Well, first of all, that's one way of putting it, right? Yeah,

20:09

like The lack of quality data

20:11

is why you don't know the scale consequences

20:14

of organized retail crime They're literally just

20:17

working backwards from their conclusion that

20:19

this is all really happening Like

20:25

literally the opposite is true like they're winning

20:27

because of these fucking surveillance videos Like I swear

20:29

that's it. Yeah for the next portion. I'm

20:32

gonna send you the entire report Don't

20:35

worry, you don't have to read it unless

20:37

you in full unless you want to

20:40

It's always a risk sending you the full report because now I

20:42

know in two days time You're gonna

20:44

just get bored and read it and then text me something

20:47

that like I missed Okay,

20:50

the funniest part of this report is not

20:52

the awful data it's when they Scour

20:55

social media for evidence

20:57

of organized retail crime. Yes at

21:00

one point they say quote as

21:02

of November 2022 a Subcommunity

21:06

on reddit contain discussions about retail

21:08

theft best practices retailer

21:11

loss prevention strategy Yes, and

21:13

tips on the circumvention of anti

21:15

theft technologies. Fuck. Yeah, and then they cite

21:17

to the subreddit r-slash

21:20

a legal life pro tip Sound

21:25

like it was set up by the FBI honestly, so

21:27

okay go to page 18. Oh

21:30

my god They're literally listing fucking reddit

21:32

post. It's literally just screenshots

21:36

of posts from reddit It

21:39

says these screenshots from the popular social

21:41

media website reddit indicate thieves

21:43

are aware of retailer security

21:46

practices

21:47

although posts such as these are generally aimed at

21:49

amateur shoplifters or Booster

21:52

operations also benefit from the availability

21:54

of this information So they're even

21:57

acknowledging that it just like is random

21:59

people. They're literally

21:59

being like, look, look, this

22:02

is screenshots of the

22:05

posts of seven teenagers, but

22:08

professionals might benefit from the

22:10

insight that these teenagers are spreading

22:13

on the internet. Again,

22:15

this is the most, like, this is like the number

22:17

one report. Like, this is the best they

22:20

have. That's just the

22:22

same as the videos. It's like, we now have the technology

22:24

to do this. But 20 years ago, shoplifters

22:27

also would have been sharing

22:28

like, the store's easy, the store's hard, whatever. Right.

22:30

But cops were, cops were too old

22:33

to know how to go on message boards 20 years

22:35

ago. Okay, go to page 29 of the PDF. 29. Oh, this one

22:37

says, Ork likely to expand

22:40

in

22:44

scale, comma, sophistication. That's

22:46

right. Oh, yeah, it's always, this is another moral panic thing. It's always

22:49

just around the corner that like, there's

22:51

going to be evidence for it soon. We

22:53

right, right, right. So if

22:55

you look at the top right of this page is

22:57

a screenshot from tumblr. Fuck

22:59

off, fuck off. A

23:02

user on tumblr. Yeah. All right. Yeah.

23:04

Can you, can you read that? A

23:05

user on tumblr presented justifications

23:07

for retail theft based on anti-capitalist

23:10

views and arguments that theft

23:12

does not cause

23:13

financial harm to large retailers.

23:15

Got them.

23:18

They're

23:18

admitting it. Some, someone on tumblr

23:20

says shoplifting is against

23:21

capitalism. And

23:23

then, and then below that, there's

23:26

a screenshot from a search on TikTok

23:28

for like shoplifting tips for

23:30

borrow from stores. Dude,

23:33

the tumblr guy says that $6 pair

23:35

of shades they stuffed in their bra from old Navy.

23:37

No one's going to miss it. Dude, damn,

23:40

a fucking screenshot of

23:42

a tumblr. Behind

23:44

this is just like a child. Yeah,

23:47

yeah, yeah, yeah. Like

23:49

a kid, a kid who's stealing

23:51

like $140 worth

23:54

of shit from Abercrombie or

23:56

whatever. You can tell they're just desperate

23:59

to gin up.

25:32

shows

26:00

that bail reform and higher felony

26:02

thresholds don't increase theft. But

26:05

that research was conducted before the pandemic.

26:08

So we need more research. Okay, yeah.

26:10

So keep looking at it till we get the result we want. Envision

26:13

research that agreed with me. Now,

26:15

it's now the picture is not so clear,

26:18

is it? Also, shoplifting is way down in like a 30 year

26:20

time span. I mean, the numbers are always garbage,

26:22

but it's like, if you look at the 90s, it was way

26:25

higher.

26:25

So were criminal penalties

26:27

lower than?

26:28

Every crime has been falling since the

26:30

80s as a general rule. And

26:33

yes, you can look at the last several

26:36

years and you start to see spikes

26:38

in various different types of crime. I mentioned

26:41

vehicle theft. They're

26:43

like demonstrably up over the last several years. And

26:45

the data on that is relatively reliable because people

26:47

report their car stolen. But

26:50

we're working from a very low

26:52

baseline, right? Numbers that are

26:55

historically very low. Even

26:57

after the spikes, a lot of these figures

26:59

are still lower than what

27:02

the rates were in the mid-aughts, for example.

27:05

I want to be clear that this has been like an incredibly

27:07

fruitful lobbying effort. Nine

27:10

states have implemented laws targeting

27:12

organized retail crime. More

27:14

than a dozen states have created task forces.

27:17

There is now a proposed federal law being

27:20

considered that would make it way easier to bring

27:22

federal theft charges against shoplifters.

27:24

Of course. And so, the culmination of a

27:27

very extensive lobbying effort and

27:29

all of this media coverage, these bullshit reports,

27:32

the goal is to drive government

27:34

resources toward a retailer's security.

27:37

And it's working. It's working extremely

27:39

well. Yeah.

27:40

And the whole

27:42

myth of organization, we've seen this over

27:44

and over again. Me and Sarah did an episode

27:47

on street gangs, for you're wrong

27:49

about, which was

27:49

genuinely very radicalizing to

27:51

me. We saw the same kinds of messaging

27:54

around gangs in the 1990s. They're

27:56

about to come to the suburbs. It's so bad. And

27:58

you look into it. like three teenagers,

28:01

these international criminal syndicates, that

28:04

stuff never materialized. And

28:06

the purpose of this myth

28:09

of organization is to

28:11

distract ordinary people

28:13

from like the obvious drivers of petty

28:15

crime, which is mostly poverty and

28:18

other sort of larger structural factors

28:21

that we can do something about. You see

28:23

this rhetoric starting to

28:26

show up, right? Of like repeat offenders

28:29

and like longer prison sentences,

28:32

higher bail, etc. And it's like this

28:34

is the stuff that drove mass incarceration in the

28:36

1990s. We're just doing it again. And

28:39

like we're basically getting a resurgence

28:41

of like three strikes type of rhetoric.

28:44

The thing that always like strikes me about this is like

28:47

countries with much less petty crime than America, is

28:49

that because they have larger prison populations

28:51

than we do? And like harsher punishments

28:54

for low level misdemeanors? If

28:57

locking people up worked, we wouldn't have

29:00

shoplifting in this country. Right. People

29:03

vastly underestimate how

29:06

aggressively prosecutions proceed

29:08

in the United States. People think that like these

29:11

guys are getting like picked up for shoplifting

29:13

and then just waltzing out of the jail and like spitting

29:16

in the cops face and being like, I

29:18

do what I want. Now, a

29:20

lot of people are just getting fucking buried under

29:22

the jail for minor offenses, right?

29:25

The sort of media narrative always

29:29

revolves around this like general

29:31

abstract permissiveness that

29:34

we are not brutal enough. You

29:36

know, you look at that Good Morning America segment,

29:39

what are they actually doing there? Like what

29:41

is it accomplishing? It is fostering

29:44

a sense of fear that creates

29:47

a permission structure for law enforcement

29:49

to do whatever the fuck they want with criminals,

29:51

right? One of the last

29:54

things I want to mention is I heard

29:56

the Good Morning America segment and I was like,

29:59

the terror.

29:59

terrorism thing threw me, right?

30:02

Yeah, come on, man. I

30:04

did a little control F for terrorist and terrorism

30:06

because I was like, whoa, whoa, is this in here

30:08

somewhere? Osama. Publicly available

30:10

information regarding the involvement of

30:12

traditional transnational organized crime

30:15

groups, such as those involved in drug

30:17

trafficking, weapons smuggling, trafficking

30:20

in persons, cybercrime, or corruption

30:22

networks, or transnational

30:24

terrorist organizations in ORC

30:27

is speculative and lacks specificity.

30:31

Long pause. Oh. It

30:33

is plausible some of these groups may have some

30:35

involvement in ORC given

30:37

their operational sophistication

30:40

and the potentially lucrative income

30:42

stream ORC offers, according

30:45

to a federal law enforcement investigator

30:47

and an investigative journalist. Like,

30:50

who? They don't even fucking cite it. Who?

30:53

They don't even cite it. Oh my God. They

30:55

don't even cite it. So there is so

30:58

much rank speculation

31:00

in these sorts of reports that just gets

31:03

laundered onto fucking Good Morning

31:05

America. Like your mom is watching

31:08

that at 7 a.m.