Chicago’s Lori Lightfoot to Re-Fund the Police

BUCK: Here’s Lori Lightfoot right now, the mayor of Chicago, saying, “Oh, yeah, no, no. there’s gonna be more money for cops in the next budget.”

LIGHTFOOT: The police department’s budget will increase. No question. We have to. We have to make sure that we are continuing to provide resources, uhh, to, umm, recruit the next generation of police officers and in particular make sure that we’re doing that recruitment in a way that reflects the diversity of our city.

BUCK: Clay, of course! Of course this is what should be done. The fact that Democrats… We talk about political leadership. If you’re not willing to stand against the currents of the mob demanding that there be not only… Remember, defund the police isn’t just about the actual money behind law enforcement. It’s about whether prosecutors are going to go after cops for doing their jobs in good faith.

It’s about whether prosecutors are gonna go after the bad guys for attacking cops because, you know, oh, they don’t look like they’re too harsh on them. It’s about the DOJ doing consent decrees investigating police departments for alleged racism. That’s all part of this defund the police. It’s just handcuffing the cops so they can’t handcuff the bad guys.

CLAY: It’s also about the culture that you create in your communities of disrespect that exists for police. And that, to me, is the very essence of the difficulty that our police officers go there on a day-to-day basis. Because if you go back and you look at every single interaction that turns violent between police and the people that they are trying to protect, almost every single one of them, if the person that was being investigated by, police had complied with police instructions would have never happened.

Almost every single one of them. Just comply with police instructions. I have this conversation with my kids on a regular basis. Just did it again recently in the car, got a long drive. We were going to East Tennessee to visit with the in-laws. And I was talking with my oldest, who’s 13. He’s an eight grader.

BUCK: How did the in-law visit go, by the way? How’d that go?

CLAY: The in-law visit went pretty well. You know what’s wild? The biggest upset in the 17 years that I’ve been married to my wife is I have gone from the least favored person of my mother-in-law so maybe her favorite person in the whole family. I kid my wife all the time that her mom likes me more than she likes her.

BUCK: Clay, your humility is the stuff of legend.

CLAY: Oh, I mean, it is. There’s no one who is more humble than me. But it is the most amazing comeback story of all time, at least in our relationship, that I have gone from detested by my mother-in-law to now more beloved than her own daughter. But it was a great visit, ’cause I have one of the best mothers-in-law in the world because she has great taste in her sons-in-law.

But I was in the car with my kids, Buck, and in particular my 13-year-old, who’s about to be an eighth grader and is starting to get out on his own a little bit more. As you get eighth grade, ninth grade, tenth grade, you’re starting to have a little bit more independence. And we were talking about this.

He was asking me about the defund police in the car cause he’s learning about it. He’s a debater. He’s learning these different topics, and that was one of the topics they were debating. I said, “Hey, before we talk about the idea of defunding the police, there’s a big lesson here: When a police officer tells you to do something, do it. Do it!”

I think that’s something that parents out there all should be teaching their kids, because I said, “Look. Your dad is a lawyer. If a police officer behaves inappropriately and you get investigated in a way that you shouldn’t at some point, we can file a lawsuit. We can have a Fourth Amendment case about whether or not the evidence is admissible or whatever.

“One, don’t get in trouble, right? But two, do what a police officer says,” and I just… I don’t know how many parents actually have this conversation with their kids. But just comply, and there’s virtually a zero percent chance of your family ever having an issue with a police officer.

BUCK: Isn’t it amazing we’re teaching kids now to comply with a cloth over their faith in school because that’s going to say save the people next to them, prevent them from maybe even committing murder if you listen to that woman from the council in Oklahoma —

CLAY: That imbecile.

BUCK: — and that they have to have Plexiglas around them. Of all the things, that’s maybe the absolute dumbest, the foot markings in elevators and, “This is where you put your feet for social distancing.”

CLAY: Ali our producer said people have to face opposite directions in some elevators?

BUCK: That’s actually new.

CLAY: Don’t they have to face against the wall?

BUCK: That was really dumb you get into the list, you start to realize how stupid some of this is remember when they started putting circles in the grass in public parks to show you how to social distance in a park?

CLAY: Yeah. (laughing) They have that not everywhere. In New York, that was a big deal.

BUCK: That was a big deal. Yeah, I, no, look, it’s gotten completely out of control and crazy. But it is true that they teach kids this stuff in school but if you were to say, “Hey, we should do a module on…” There are few modules I think should be taught to kids at a pretty young age. Basic personal financier would be one.

CLAY: That’s a good one.

BUCK: Law enforcement would be another.

CLAY: Just comply! Just do what a police officer says. I don’t know how many other parents have that conversation.

BUCK: This is a very police friendly and law-abiding audience.

CLAY: Yeah. I’m not saying that you should just completely assume that everything that you’re being told is a hundred percent constitutional. I’m a lawyer. But I am saying all of those issues can be litigated afterwards. (chuckles) If you escalate a situation where it turns violent, it’s an unbelievable error of judgment of the initial person who’s being asked questions. It’s just… I’m blown away that we don’t talk more about it.

BUCK: Lori Lightfoot is gonna have more funding for cops. She learned the lesson it seems after the terrible year Chicago had with violence and the increase in shootings.