- Sup you beautiful bastards.
Welcome back to a very special Sunday Philip DeFranco show.
And before we jump into the news, like I said,
we got a big announcement today.
Over the last several months, I know a lot of you
like I did have fallen in love with Zaid Tabani.
He's an incredibly talented bam, who's been opening
and closing the Sunday show with freestyle raps
about the news we just all lived through,
which is why Zaid and I are incredibly excited
about launching his brand
new channel youtube.com/zaidtabani.
I've been so happy
that so many people have seen what I see in him.
What I've also realized is actually the structure
of the Philip DeFranco show,
while it benefits from his involvement
it actually gets in the way of it, right?
The weekly freestyle, the news is so good,
it needs to have the ability
to be shared easier, trend easier.
And so that's where we're launching it on this new channel.
Also, do not get it twisted.
Zaid is still part of the family.
He's still on the payroll
and the Sunday Philip DeFranco show and freestyle
the news will be going live
at the same time on both channels kicking to each other.
But also I'll let the man himself speak to you.
Zaid?
Za.
Zaid?
you go subscribe
to this man's channel right now, youtube.com/zaidtabani.
You're getting freestyle the news.
You're getting so much more.
Also, it's okay.
I know that.
- Where am I?
Jesus.
I'm so scared.
Is this like an ISIS thing?
- Stop what?
- I'm vanilla ISIS.
That's what they're gonna call me now.
By the way, is that my rap name?
- That is your rap name.
- Thanks. - Yeah
- Zaid Tabani and Vanilla ISIS.
- No.
- We're not allowed in airports.
- But honestly, you need to go subscribe
to this channel right now.
I don't fuck with a lot of people.
I fuck with Zed.
Honestly, I think of myself very highly.
I think honestly, your way
of putting out the news is my favorite way.
- Really?
- Yeah. - Oh man.
Thank you.
- What was that?
Oh, I'm shocked.
Shocked.
- All right, thanks motherfucker.
Appreciate it, bro.
- No, I'm pumped for the new channel.
I'm pumped to see what you do with Too Soon Crew.
As far as like releasing.
I know you have way too much unreleased stuff.
- I have like 50 to 70 tracks I've not released at all.
- Yeah, so it's gonna be awesome.
I'm excited to see what else you do in addition
to freestyle the news.
- Yeah.
- But know that freestyle the news
is still happening.
Go now.
It's awesome.
New channel, new shit.
New secret club.
I'll let you tell 'em about that.
- Yeah.
- No, not here, on the other channel.
- On the other channel.
- After they go subscribe,
which by the way, if you go, we're gonna select five
new random subscribers to youtube.com/zaidtabani
to win $200.
'Cause why not.
- Yeah, why not?
You can go right now.
I had something I was gonna say
and I didn't think of it ahead of time.
So now we're just here now.
- Just rap it.
- Just, just, I was about to say
I'm not your monkey Phil, but I technically am.
- No.
- Also, in addition to possibly getting $200,
if you don't subscribe, I will find where you live.
I will give you a dog.
I will watch you raise that dog
and then maybe that dog disappears.
- Where'd it go?
- So yeah, come to the channel and hey, can I stay?
You wanna like hang out for a little bit or?
- Yeah, really, if you've liked or loved anything
that Zaid has done on this channel on the Sunday shows,
don't walk, run over to his channel, go subscribe.
He's showing me some of the cool that he's gonna release
on the main channel, but also on toosooncrew.com.
Fucking awesome.
With that said, buckle up.
Hit that like button.
Let's just jump into it 'cause we got some heavy news today,
starting with what if you were just chilling in your car
and a cop just threatened to murder you
seemingly for no reason.
And I asked because that's exactly what happened a couple
of months ago to a rapper by the name of Frexx Lebron.
He's just sitting there in a parking lot on his phone
when two LA Deputies approach,
ordering him to exit the vehicle.
So he puts his hands up, leaves the engine off
and questions them
which is when one pulls out his gun and does this.
- [Policeman] Take off in this car and I'm gonna shoot you.
I'm gonna make it super easy on you.
You put this car in drive
you're getting one wipe to the chest.
I don't care what you got,
I don't care if you got on you, but guess what bro?
Now you gotta deal with it.
But if you pull some (beep)
you're gonna take one to the chest.
- After that, he gets handcuffed and ticketed
for a missing license plate.
But immediately he files a 10 million claim
against the police saying he's been traumatized,
suffers panic attacks,
and is now afraid to even drive.
- I was scared to death.
I didn't think I was going to make it home
to see my kids.
- So all that goes viral.
And you have people asking, well, why did this even happen?
Well, we now know it may have something to do
with gangs and no, not like Bloods or the Crips.
I'm talking about deputy gangs.
As it turns out, the Los Angeles Sheriff Department
more than any other in the country,
is ruled by internal gangs that terrorize the communities
they're supposed to protect and serve.
These so-called deputy gangs are not new, right?
They go back 50 years
with an internal memo identifying the first one
called the Little Devils back in 1973.
And since then, it's spread like a virus,
with at least 18 different gangs having been identified
though a recent report
by the Civilian Oversight Commission named
at least a half dozen active ones
those being The Executioners, The Bandidos, The Regulators
The Spartans, The Gladiators, The Cowboys
and The Grim Reapers with each gang operating out
of a geographic precinct, which the report says they treat
like quasi-independent fiefdoms.
For example, The Executioners run out of Compton station.
While East LA Station is notorious
as the home of The Bandidos.
What they have in common is that they tend to cluster
around low-income minority neighborhoods
and they mark inclusion with tattoos
and hand signs just like any other street gang.
Also, like street gangs are violent,
aggressive, and lawless.
So it's not really a surprise that the report observed
that the case of Frexx Lebron is characteristic
of deputy gang behavior, which is further backed up
by sources who told an outlet the deputy there had ties
to The Grim Reapers, but also understand
that case is mild compared to some
of the other activities like for instance killing people.
Take for instance the infamous case of Andres Guardado.
He was an 18 year old Latino security guard
who was just talking to someone at work
when two deputies pull up
they begin chasing him with one of the cops
then shooting him in the back five times killing him
and later claiming that it looked
like he had a gun in his waistband and he reached for it.
The police maintaining they found a gun at the scene.
But Guardado's family,
they said they didn't believe it,
so they sue and the police do you know what
innocent people do?
They settle for $8 million.
You know, innocent cop behavior.
With a whistleblower later testifying under oath
that the deputy who shot this young man
was seeking to join The Executioners,
because these gangs require new recruits
to initiate themselves by performing some violent act
against the community, often shooting someone.
So prospective gang members have deliberately
followed someone they believed to have a gun,
so a confrontation would occur.
Or like in, in another case,
deputies transporting a shooting victim to the hospital
took a little detour and assaulted them instead.
And so you have this long list of dead young men
mostly black and Latino, from Anthony Vargas to Paul Rea
to Sean Monterosa with their mothers
and many others protesting and suing the county
for their sons wrongful deaths.
And in fact, as of 2021, according to a report,
deputy gangs had caused taxpayers
at least 55 million in court judgements and settlements.
But very often these criminal cops just get
away with what many consider murder
because they make the shooting seem justified,
with one deputy whose voice was substituted
for his own safety telling CBS,
they plant weapons on the people they kill.
- [Speaker] There's been multiple occasions where they say,
hey, we got a guy that has a gun and he's running from us.
In reality, that person never had a gun.
And they would say, oh, it was a phantom gun.
It was something that really wasn't there.
- Another deputy explaining how they'll just arrest
people for no reason
and then find a crime to justify it after the fact.
- [Speaker] It's called working backwards.
You make the detention first,
then you figure out legally
how you can make that detention.
- Then one cop shoots someone,
the gang off and throws a party
to celebrate even recording every shooting
in an official book, as well as doing things
like embellishing their tattoos, like adding smoke
to a gun to signify a kill.
But a key thing here is that these deputy gangs also
wield unwarranted power inside the stations and units
where they exist calling the shots that would otherwise
be reserved for sergeants, lieutenants, and captains.
So as a result, they often control things
like scheduling assignments and promotions,
and if management tries to reign them in,
they've been known to put up resistance
through work slowdowns and lying
on reports to protect each other.
Plus, if you refuse to join
or try to speak out against them,
they stop sending you back up on dangerous calls
steal your bulletproof vests, even leave dead rats
outside your home.
And of course, as an addition to the very in your face stuff
of threatening to hurt or kill you,
all of which is why you have Sean Kennedy,
a law professor who studies
deputy gangs saying you have this incredibly toxic culture.
- We're really seeing a cult of us against them
in which police, the sheriffs in the gangs,
view themselves as warriors
or occupying armies against minority communities.
- And adding that for those deputies,
their status is enhanced
by using excessive force against community members.
But despite countless reports,
investigations and complaints,
over so many decades, change is yet to come partly
because the gangs are so entrenched,
but also because they've enjoyed the backing
of certain sheriffs, right?
Sheriffs like the controversial Alex Villanueva.
He worked at the East LA Station early in his career,
then got elected to sheriff
in 2018 promising to reform the department.
But when he actually got into office
the oversight report says that he
at the very least tolerated, if not rewarded,
deputy gangs even installing members
as his right-hand men with some examples
including making a tattooed caveman his undersheriff
and promoting a grim reaper to chief of staff.
And then in public,
he'd sometimes deny the gangs even existed,
but other times he would acknowledge them,
but seem to defend them.
Like when he said to Al Jazeera.
- It's a social function, people ban together, unit pride.
In the absence of good supervision, yes,
it could be harmful, but other groups that have tattoos
in fact all of them engage in charitable activities.
- However, since last November, a new sheriff's in town
and his name's Robert Luna,
an outsider of the department who last served
as Long Beach police chief, and just last month,
he created the Office of Constitutional Policing,
which is tasked with eradicating deputy gangs.
But of course, all of that's easier said than done.
This is a problem that has gone for decades and decades.
During that time we've heard a lot of reforms floated.
Things like prohibiting tattoos,
breaking up gangs and reducing the autonomy of precincts.
But the problem in LA just continued
to grow and grow and grow.
And it's gotten to just such a crazy place,
because understand there are other police gangs
that exist elsewhere in the country, but reportedly,
no other large law enforcement agency is so ripe with them.
Like the LA Sheriff's Department, right?
It is the second largest municipal
law enforcement agency in the country.
They have this number
of officers policing more than 4 million residents.
And according to the oversight report,
as many as 15% to 20% of deputies agreed to join a gang.
But that's where this story ends for now,
obviously, we're gonna keep our eyes on it
make sure you subscribe so you can stay in the loop.
With all that said, I gotta pass the question off to you.
What are your thoughts here?
And then, we hear so many cases about doxing
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I mean, just kind of think for a second.
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And then, so this story starts with a big old L,
and that is Oklahoma voting against legalizing weed.
And the reason this is an L isn't just
because now people can't get high to cope
with the fact that they're in Oklahoma,
but also because they're now missing
out on a ton of money that would've funded many
essential public services that many residents rely on.
But a key thing with this vote is it was not close.
Voters rejected marijuana legalization by more than 20%,
but if the vote had passed,
it would've imposed a 15% excise tax on top
of the state's existing 4.5% sales tax for cannabis sales,
which notably it has for medical marijuana.
What we're talking about right now is recreational.
And as far as where that tax revenue would've gone,
it would've gone to local governments,
courts, public schools, substance abuse treatment
and the General Revenue fund.
And understand, we're not talking
about like small modest contributions, right?
A study conducted
by the Oklahoma Cannabis Industry Association
and a law firm estimated
that recreational marijuana could have brought more
than 434 million from 2024 to 2028.
And keep in mind, this would be in addition
to the 386 million medical marijuana would be
projected to bring in during that same time period.
But also that may be a low estimate because according
to the Marijuana Policy Project, just in 2021 alone,
medical and recreational use
nationally generated 3.7 billion in tax revenues.
And that doesn't even include revenue
from local cannabis sales tax that some cities charge.
And a key thing to remember is
that each state has different policies
or how high different tax rates are and how much
of the tax revenue is allocated at different programs.
But looking into it, it's actually very interesting.
For example, in Colorado they have
a 15% marijuana sales tax.
And just last year alone, they brought in $325 million
with most of that money going toward education in the state
with one of the most tangible ways that cannabis
taxes have been used there being the best grant program
or the Building Excellent Schools Today program,
which 100% of the state's excise tax
and weed is allocated to,
with the money going towards construction
and building costs for many schools in need.
Another good example is back in 2019,
lawmakers allocated $25 million
in cannabis tax revenue to help school districts set
up full day kindergarten programs
by furniture and make other upgrades.
And beyond that, a big chunk
of tax revenues in Colorado goes
to the general fund as well as the marijuana tax cash fund.
And that's a key one because they use the money
for healthcare and health education initiative,
substance abuse prevention and law enforcement.
Also, I wanna share an absolutely wild number
with you, $4.6 billion.
That's how much California has generated
in cannabis tax revenue since 2018.
And they've put that money
into public services like transportation,
except apparently every road I've ever driven on here,
as well as public safety in health, libraries, schools,
social services, and natural resource management programs.
And remember, the tax rate can change.
In places like Washington State,
they have a marijuana tax of 37%,
which resulted in them collecting 515.2 million
in revenues last year.
In fact, it's so profitable
that it actually generated more than double the amount
of total revenue than that of liquor sales.
And there almost half of the money went
into the basic health fund, which is absolutely key,
because that provides healthcare for low income individuals
and people who lack health insurance coverage.
And Washington's decision to focus
on funding healthcare has had a huge impact.
According to the marijuana Policy Project,
for every $1 billion in revenue collected
from the cannabis sales tax, nearly 600 million
of that is funneled into public health initiatives.
But also a massive thing to consider is we're
we're just talking about tax revenue.
At this point in the conversation,
we're not even considering the more indirect things, right?
When you, on the lower end decriminalize
or on the higher end legalize, you begin treating something
as a public health issue rather than a problem
for the police to solve, which is why you have supporters
of marijuana legalization pointing to things like
according to a 2013 report from the ACLU,
there were over 8 million cannabis related arrests in the US
between 2001 and 2010, a number that horrifyingly accounted
for more than half of all drug arrests in 2010.
But that also reportedly costing states
around $3.6 billion to enforce possession laws.
Though notably, that was before any state's legalized
recreational pot, which is why I'll mention
in a follow-up study published in 2020,
the ACLU found that marijuana arrests had decreased
by 18% from 2010 to 2018.
Key thing that being when only eight states
in Washington DC had legalized it.
But even with that, we're still talking about billions
and billions of dollars being spent needlessly,
in my opinion.
Again, and I understand I'm probably preaching
to the choir here, but like it's marijuana,
like how many lives are ruined every day
by alcohol and they have fucking ads on the Super Bowl.
And to bring it back to Oklahoma, this is an issue there.
According to reports, still over 4,500 people
in the state are arrested each year
for marijuana possession.
And while, yes, thankfully criminal cases
have dropped significantly,
since medical marijuana was legalized back in 2018,
there are still thousands of charges brought up each year.
And part of that's connected
to how poorly they're doing this first part,
because Oklahoma actually has insanely relaxed regulations
on medical marijuana, which in turn has contributed
to the growing illicit market
and thus, more law enforcement crackdowns.
There's also, and this is gonna shock you,
a big racial element to this story as well.
Both the 2013 and 2020 ACLU reports found
that black Americans were
over three times times more likely to face arrests
for weed related charges than white people
despite the fact that they used at the same rate.
And in Oklahoma specifically,
that division is even more extreme
with Oklahomans for criminal justice reform
also reporting that black men were five times more
likely to be arrested for weed possession
and twice as likely to be sentenced than white men.
But Oklahomans aren't alone with voters
in other conservative states having also
rejected legalization measures,
including Arkansas, North Dakota, and South Dakota
this past November.
This despite general polling continually showing
that a growing number of American support legalizing weed
for both recreational and medical use.
But that said, as we're clearly seeing,
there are still some strongholds
where this is just not gonna happen.
So obviously this is something we're gonna keep our eyes on.
You should definitely subscribe to stay in the loop.
But I also wanna pass the question off to you.
What are your thoughts here?
One, regarding the story in general, but also two,
were you aware of where this money has been going?
And so with all that,
that's where I'm gonna leave you on this Sunday show.
Obviously we had two big stories.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on either one.
But also remember, get ready for another full week
of brand new Philip DeFranco show starting tomorrow.
And right now, if you haven't already
go to youtube.com/@zaidtabani, go subscribe.
Not only is there an awesome giveaway,
but there's so much awesome content,
even more awesome down the pipeline,
especially on toosooncrew.com.
But that said, as always, my name's Philip DeFranco
you've just been filled in.
I love yo faces, and I'll see you tomorrow.