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Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. The legendary escapologist Harry Houdini was obsessed with the afterlife. I see a little boy.
He is in a happy place. Join me, Tim Harford, for a Cautionary Tales trilogy on the world's most famous magician and his campaign to ban mediums, a mission that would cost him friends and leave him fearing for his life. They're going to kill me. Listen to Cautionary Tales on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every Thursday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your favorite shows.
Come hungry for season four. Hi, I'm Sam Mullins, and I've got a new podcast coming out called Go Boy, the gritty true story of how one man fought his way out of some of the darkest places imaginable. Roger Caron was 16 when first convicted. He spent 24 of those years in jail.
But when Roger Caron picked up a pen and paper, he went from an ex-con to a literary darling. From Campside Media and iHeart Podcasts, listen to Go Boy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a lot in life that's not guaranteed, like getting the deal you actually want. But with the AT&T guarantee, you get AT&T's best deal on the new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra for zero dollars, with eligible phone trade-in and your choice of their most popular plans. Learn more at att.com slash Samsung. Offers vary by device. Terms and restrictions apply. Subject to change. AT&T.
Connecting changes everything. This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Did you know that the east and west parts of our country have two entirely different approaches to policing? Here to tell that story is former LAPD Sergeant Bob Alinas, the officer who fingerprinted the hands of serial killer Richard Ramirez, otherwise known as the Night Stalker.
Let's take a listen. I was working in West LA in the Brentwood area and actually a few blocks from where OJ actually lived off of Rockingham. That's right in a very affluent area of LA and pretty large mansions and homes. So, it was around two or three in the morning and on our radio frequency, the other officers contacted us and said, hey, come on back and back us up, we see some suspicious vehicle. And they observed this car, it was a 74 Ford Pinto, and it was pretty much a jalopy at that time. So, Richard Ramirez was driving down the street and it looked like he was pulling into a driveway. He would look at it, back up, go to another residence. So, he was casing the homes and we pulled him over. We ordered him out of the car.
He's cooperating with us and he looks a mess. And so, that's the edge of law enforcement and that's where you have to decide what you want police officers to do. Do you want them to wait until a crime has occurred and then apprehend the person or do you want them to do what we do and be proactive and stop these guys? You guys are asleep at night and you don't want to be murdered in the middle of the night. And so, I would expect people would want their police officers in their neighborhood to be proactive and figure out what's going on. What is this guy doing in the neighborhood?
And at the very least, if nothing happened, we would chase him out. So, that comes up to the concept of policing and there's two concepts. One, when policing started in the 1820s, it was by a guy named Sir Robert Peel. P-E-E-L. And he designed policing in London. Now, we've become a modern city.
How do we regulate and control just a massive amount of people in this little area? So, he came up with this idea of reactive policing. So, you have a police officer that is assigned to a foot beat and it's one or two blocks in distance.
And he would walk up and down. He becomes familiar with the neighborhood or with the businesses. And then when a crime occurs, you summon the police officer. He would come over and he would either stop a crime that's occurring or if it did occur, then they would get a hold of the detectives at Scotland Yard. And they would, Scotland Yard would come out, take over the crime scene and then the police officer would continue walking up and down his beat. That's called reactive policing.
You react to a crime that just occurred. So, in the East Coast of our country, that is the system that we have. So, in New York, you have an insane number of people, you know, I think right now there's like 46,000 police officers because it's very labor intensive. And that in Philadelphia, Boston, all of those guys have that concept. As we started developing our country and going to the West, we started into proactive policing. And that's where you see Dodge City and Tombstone and you see the White Herps and all those guys because we know that we have criminals coming into the town.
They're escaping the East Coast and so now they're coming into the West. You've got all these bandits coming in. So, we're not going to wait for them to commit a crime. We know what they're doing. So, now that's proactive policing. We're going to have the White Herps go out there, confront these guys, stop them, kick them out of town and get rid of them.
That's what it is. And so, Los Angeles was built on proactive policing. And so, the difference is that when I was a police officer in the 80s, we had 6400 police officers. And at the time that I made that arrest in 1984, Chicago had 17,000 police officers, New York had 26,000. But when you look at the FBI crime stats, LEP arrested 100,000 people more a year than New York did. So, how do you do that? We have 6400 officers versus 26,000.
And how does that happen? And that's because we're proactive. We're doing what we did that night with the night stalker. We see something. We're going to be proactive.
We're going to find out what's going on there. And in this case, we made an arrest. In New York, they would just let them drive by and just wait until something happened or they hear a window break and maybe respond. And that's reactive. So, those are the two concepts in law enforcement. And we see a change in law enforcement when Willie Williams was hired from Philadelphia.
That was right after Chief Gerald Gates. So, our city managers decided that maybe we should start doing the reactive policing. And since then, it's been this long struggle to actually, today, I'm reading in the paper where the city council is looking into removing the pretext stops.
Pretext means I see that broken taillight. I'm going to use that as a reason to stop investigating and find out what's going on. And I think that the proactive policing is the way to go. Especially now when we've got all these illegals that have come through that we have no idea who they are.
But they're coming from countries, third world countries that hate us. And so, I think that reactive policing is not going to work. Proactive policing will.
So, that's the whole thing about Richard Ramirez. And for me, it's a lesson on policing. And what do you want the police officers to do?
And when they do something like we did, are they going to be vilified? And that's where the officers are today. They're not doing proactive policing because now they're accused of being racist like this judge. You know, he's accusing us of basically pulling over because he's, oh, that was the other thing he said. If Richard Ramirez got into an argument with his wife or girlfriend, and he decided to get in the car and blow off steam and he should be able to drive anywhere in the city and not get stopped by the police just because he's in a white neighborhood. That was his scenario that he gave us at that time.
Theoretically, yeah, you're right. But you're going to pull into a neighborhood and you're going to drive around and stop and pull in to drive or get out. So that's where you're going to rely on professional guys like me and my partners to determine the difference between somebody that's despawning and blowing off steam and somebody that looks like he's going to break into a house. And we should have that ability to make that investigative stop. Otherwise, he would have killed somebody in Brentwood. And a terrific job on the editing and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to LAPD Sergeant Bob Alinas.
The story of two different styles of policing, East and West Coast, here on Our American Stories. Here at Our American Stories, we bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that need to be told.
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Give a little, give a lot. Help us keep the great American stories coming. That's our American stories dot com. There's nothing like sinking into luxury. Anabay sofas combine ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price. Anabay has designed the only fully machine washable sofa from top to bottom.
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Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. The legendary escapologist Harry Houdini was obsessed with the afterlife. I see a little boy.
He is in a happy place. Join me, Tim Harford, for a cautionary tales trilogy on the world's most famous magician and his campaign to ban mediums. A mission that would cost him friends and leave him fearing for his life. They're going to kill me. Listen to cautionary tales on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Call broke every Thursday on the Black Effect podcast network. I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, wherever you get your favorite shows.
Come hungry for season four. Hi, I'm Sam Mullins, and I've got a new podcast coming out called Go Boy, the gritty true story of how one man fought his way out of some of the darkest places imaginable. Roger Caron was 16 when first convicted. Has spent 24 of those years in jail.
But when Roger Caron picked up a pen and paper, he went from an ex-con to a literary darling. From campsite media and I Heart podcasts, listen to Go Boy on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, chairman and CEO of I Heart Media. I'm excited to introduce a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing. I'm having conversations with some folks across a wide range of industries. Hear how they reach the top of their fields and the lessons they learned along the way that everyone can use. I'll be joined by innovative leaders like chairman and CEO of Elf Beauty, Tarang Amin. Legendary singer-songwriter and philanthropist, Jewel. Being a rock star is very fun, but helping people is way more fun.
And Damian Maldonado, CEO of American Financing. I figured out the formula, you just have to work hard, then that's magic. Join me as we uncover innovations in data and analytics, the math, and the ever important creative spark, the magic. Listen to Math and Magic on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
