08/13/13 – Antonio Buehler – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, and our first guest on the show today is probably the bravest man in Texas, if you ask me.
And I ain't met all the Texans, but god dang, this guy just blows me away.
Antonio Buehler, welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
I'm good.
Thanks a lot.
Well, the reason I call you that is because I saw footage of you in a cop's face, sticking your finger right in his face and calling him an effing coward, which is exactly what you're the opposite of.
And man, that's something else.
And well, first of all, before we get into all the everything, tell us, what is the Peaceful Streets Project?
Well, the Peaceful Streets Project is a grassroots activist effort with a goal of engaging in non-violent, non-political, direct action to try to change the culture of society so that people stand up for their rights, they stand up for the rights of other people, and they force law enforcement to modify their behavior so that they don't abuse the people.
Yeah, and so basically you're just following them around with cameras mostly and making them aware that they're being watched, little brothers watching back, right?
Yeah, that's part of it.
It's perhaps our most overt and obvious tactic, but we also do Know Your Rights trainings where we teach people what their rights are and how to flex them and how to get out of bad situations with cops.
We also do police abuse complaint departments where we give people a platform to share their stories of abuse, and we do an annual summit where we bring people from around the country to talk about police abuse, to give them tactics to take back home and to rally people within a community so that they can stand up to the police, because individually, you know, the police can crush any one of us, and they've done that throughout history, but if we can come together as a community and reject the institution and show them that we're not going to back down and allow them to walk all over us, then we actually have a chance to erode the police state.
Yeah, right on.
Well, and you know, I gotta say, man, for anybody to go following cops around with cameras, I mean, the rights training, all that is important, but for anybody to go following cops around with cameras the way that you do, that's brave, man, because that's the kind of thing that, you know, cops murder people every day for fun, just, you know, whatever, and there's no accountability, and they know that there's hardly any accountability other than what you're doing.
So, you know, and I know you know you're taking a serious risk doing what you're doing, and I'm proud of you for it.
I think it's absolutely incredible, and I think that the chilling effect on the APD, for example, I wouldn't know how to measure it, but it's got to be powerful.
They're scared to death of you, weren't they?
Yeah, and that's manifested itself in several ways.
At first, they thought that they could just bully us and to get rid of us, and so they arrested me a couple times for filming them.
They arrested some other members in our groups.
They became very aggressive, pushing us around, shining flashlights in our faces when we were trying to film them, and when that didn't work, then they issued press conferences.
They had press conferences where they complained about us filming them, and when that didn't work, then they started issuing veiled threats of violence against us, and now that's not working, so now they're trying to disrupt our police accountability summit, and they're putting pressure on venues not to host us, and they're setting up their own free public events on the same day to try to take people away from our events, and they're putting a lot of money into local media to try to keep them quiet about what we're doing.
But we're winning.
People know it.
People are sick and tired of the out-of-control police.
If you look at the latest killing in Austin, Texas of an unarmed man who hadn't committed a crime and wasn't being detained, and he was shot once in the back of the neck by an APD officer, the outrage within the community and the lack of the usual top apologists to make excuses for the criminal cops and try to malign the victims, I think that that shows how effective we've been.
People are no longer buying into the false rhetoric about how cops are automatically heroes and that we need them and that we shouldn't have raped people when they commit crimes.
Right.
Yeah, and you know, I mean, it's an important thing because those of us who are hardcore libertarians, you know, we already know this stuff just from being who we are and understanding the anatomy of the state for what it is.
But what's happening is people who aren't Republicans, who aren't Democrats, who aren't libertarians, who aren't anything, they're just regular people, they're terrified of the police.
And they're sick and tired of it.
And then they go, wow, this guy, Buehler, is showing me the way.
There's actually something we can do about this.
We can push back against their abuse.
Yeah, and that's the thing.
It's like that's what they fear the most because usually when they kill someone or they beat someone or they set up someone on false charges and they're caught doing it, they can usually just say, oh, well, that guy was a criminal.
He was going to commit a crime.
Or, oh, look at his record.
He's been arrested four times before for possession of marijuana.
Or, oh, look, he's an angry black male.
Or, you know, oh, he's an immigrant.
But with me, they couldn't do that because of my background and the circumstances of my arrest.
And all of a sudden, there were a lot of people who were joining the Peaceful Streets Project that were not confined to any particular political ideology, socioeconomic group, racial ethnicity.
And all of a sudden, they couldn't push the same sort of PR campaign against us as they could with others.
And it doesn't.
It scares them to death.
And when you say your background, you're referring to not the fact that you're not black but the fact that you're an Army veteran.
Well, yeah.
I mean, there's a lot of things that came together.
And my criminal defense lawyer actually called it the perfect storm where I was the designated driver that night.
I was in a completely different car.
I never met the woman that was getting abused.
The only reason I got involved was because they were abusing a woman.
They were breaking the law.
Committing a felony act at that point.
I've never been arrested, never had any issues with the law.
I'm a Stanford graduate, a West Point graduate, a war veteran, a teacher.
I've been on the board of two nonprofits.
I'm not black or Hispanic.
I'm not uneducated.
They couldn't slander me the way that they've slandered so many people.
And then the best thing about it was witnesses actually stepped forward to say that the top slide, and one of those witnesses had video.
It was such a clear case of the cops were acting as criminal thugs and they refused to back down and people just saw right through it.
The police just didn't want to admit, okay, we screwed up, we were wrong, let's drop charges.
They continued to push.
I still have five charges out against me.
They're all misdemeanors, but I still have these charges out against me.
They refused to punish this cop.
In fact, they gave this cop, Patrick Aborski, their Hero of the Year Award.
They've exposed themselves and my case and what the People's Streets Project has been doing has been for anyone who's willing to step back and just look at it and dispense with the notion that cops are automatically heroes.
They can just speak to it right away.
And again, it just scares them to death that people are waking up to this notion that these guys aren't necessarily our friends and they're certainly not protectable.
It's like Anthony Gregory wrote this thing for the Mises Institute website back a few years ago against police socialism where he's pointing out this is just another monopoly government program.
Why would we expect them to do any better at their job than Housing and Urban Development does at their job or any of these other guys or any private company that somehow was able to wrangle a monopoly through state power like the old AT&T where they charge you through the nose and there's one county next door and whatever and the service is terrible and a monopoly is a monopoly and so why should it be that the APDs why would anyone expect the APD to consider their job protecting and serving the public when their job is protecting and serving their monopoly on being the police?
Yeah, and this is something that certainly transcends political ideology as well there's a lot of positions that libertarians take which conservatives or liberals automatically reject well we need national defense but we need social programs and with the police it's something where the rich people know that they don't need them they don't want them in their neighborhoods in fact they usually get private security and conservatives think that they're wasteful they spend a ton of money and use people's rights and that they're only concerned about protecting the municipal government and the corporations that they're in bed with I mean this is something that we have the ability to change the way society looks at law enforcement in a way that can transcend political boundaries so that the only people who really rally behind the police are the people who are employed by the police the municipal government workers and the corporations that are in bed with the government and while they are quite powerful and they certainly have a lot of our money to play with as far as the percentage of the population, they're tiny and this is something that we can actually win and get a lot of people to wake up to I saw on Twitter this morning there's a piece in the Nation magazine that says an unarmed black man is killed on average of once every 28 hours in this country by, as they put it a cop, a security guard, or a vigilante what they meant to say was by a cop, give me a break like security guards and vigilantes are out killing black men every 28 hours it's the police yeah and when I saw that I was really disappointed in the way that they wrote the article and I think that that's a good example of someone who wanted to write a piece which really highlighted the injustice in America for all of us but particularly for young black males when it comes to the police and because of the pressure that they have within their organizations they said, well hold on, we can't make this just about the police so let's throw in these other things security guards and vigilantes even though it probably makes up less than 1% of those killings yeah, less than less than 1% I mean, come on give me a break here I remember I had these kids in my cab and they were like 12, 13 years old and we were talking about the cops and this kid, I swear to you the kid was maybe just achieved adolescence and he says, oh yeah, my grandmama raised me my whole life that if I'm ever in a car that gets pulled over to put my hands out the window immediately, both hands now the rest of us are taught so that the cops can see them because they're scared and they're itchy trigger fingers but no, in Austin, Texas which is paradise compared to most major cities in the United States as far as peace and security goes young black children little boys are raised from the time they're kindergartners or even younger that the cops will blow your freaking head off for no reason don't give them the slightest excuse because they'll kill you can you imagine growing up like that from the time you're a little bitty boy I mean, I've hated cops since I started dealing with them when I was 11 but that's because I'm a skateboarder but up until that point I was raised to believe that they were my security force that they loved me and they were going to take good care of me and all of that crap like everybody else but for young black kids they're not raised to believe that not for one minute right, and that's the way it should be no one should be taught to look to the cops for help and security because that's how you oftentimes get into trouble but yeah, it's really interesting it's been eye opening to see law enforcement through the eyes of black America because it really is different and we in white America or privileged America, whatever you want to call it it's something that we should pay attention to and we should acknowledge for two reasons one is because it's a great injustice and as libertarians we should be vehemently opposed to any form of injustice by the state and this is a pretty big one but two is while it's historically been focused on black America and homeless people it's creeping and now white Americans are going to know what it's like too and we should learn the lessons from people who come before us yeah, well and you know what about this you're a war veteran but how many of these cops are war veterans and are just basically they're just bringing home their Fallujah tour to Austin well yeah, to a degree I think it's worse than that because I believe that the police knew us we the people as insurgents they think that it's a war zone out there and every one of us is seen as a potential insurgent and the difference between here and Iraq or here in Afghanistan is over there the soldiers actually have rules of engagement and they're actually not permitted to shoot civilians unless certain sort of things are met certain criteria are met but there are rules of engagement over there whereas here in the United States that's not the case the only rule of engagement is for the police is shoot whenever you want and then just say that you were scared for your life you thought the guy was reaching for a gun you saw a shiny object in his hand you thought that he was pointing something at you and then you can shoot not even our soldiers in Afghanistan can get away with that kind of mindless killing but here in the United States our officials actually have a greater ability to use deadly force against us well and then the most recent, I'm talking with Antonio Buehler from PeacefulStreets.com the Peaceful Streets Project and we're going to talk all about your summit and your fundraising and all this but I wanted to give you a chance to talk about the corrupt cop of the month here and the murder of this guy over there on 34th street what can you tell us about that story well I think that this story is one that's played out time and time again everyday in America to some degree but this one was pretty telling because of how obvious how obviously messed up it was there was a bank robbery early in the morning at this bank in a nice part of Austin by a tall heavyset white guy so they closed the bank down that afternoon a skinny black guy shows up and tries to get in the doors he tries to open the door and he leaves because they're locked and then he comes back and tries to open them again probably confused because he doesn't understand why a bank would be closed during work hours and so the worker there told the detective that there was a man out front so the detective went to talk to him they talked for about two minutes and then this gentleman decides to leave his name was Larry Eugene Jackson Jr and a lot of people are like well why'd he leave?and the reason he left was because he could he had every constitutional right to leave he was not being detained there was no reason for him to stay he was allowed to leave he was allowed to run away if he wanted to but despite the fact that he was legally allowed to leave and he wasn't being detained the detective Charles Spiner then went and commandeered a vehicle someone was sitting in their car he told them to go looking for this guy that would be called carjacking he chased this guy down the driver of the car had told people that the cop was frantic and out of control and when they came upon Larry Jackson he was just walking down the street he was on the sidewalk he wasn't running this detective Spiner jumped out of the car he wasn't running he was just walking down 34th right he was walking according to the person who was carjacked and then this detective chases Jackson underneath the bridge and the detective claims that there was a struggle even though he never got any medical attention and this gentleman was shot once in the back of the neck one shot in the back of the neck which a lot of people would automatically assume seemed like an execution but that's what happened and then of course APD comes out and they immediately say don't rush the judgment let the process play out the cop was in fear for his life and oh by the way we don't want you to rush the judgment on yet another Austin Police Department cop killing an unarmed person who wasn't committing a crime but let's look at the individual who was killed did you know that he was arrested five times when he was younger did you know that he was going to commit a crime so they're saying they're slandering this person who hadn't committed a crime and who hadn't been in trouble with the law in ages and they're trying to paint the picture as this is a bad person who obviously would have attacked the cop if the cop tried to stop him and that's one less thug on the street and that's the way APD always presents it that's the way cops around the country always present it when they commit these crimes against innocent people and fortunately for the first time in a long time we've seen the response be very very different than usual there's a lot more people calling out the police saying enough is enough we're sick and tired of hearing about how you guys are always scared and how you guys have such a dangerous job yet you guys are the ones going around killing everyone and I think that this case with Detective Kleiner, I don't think anything is going to happen to him because nothing ever happens to a criminal cop but I think this case has the ability to radically alter the mindset of so many people and move them away from the automatic defense of criminal cops to one of questioning them and criticism and demanding answers and I think that's what we need in order to try to erode the police state that has been built up Yeah, well and you know in this case it was just so blatant to a few points to follow up here first of all the thing about the bank fraud well he was going to commit a bank fraud really?
they didn't, never mind they didn't prove that they didn't even have a compelling narrative they didn't even say this was the kind of bank fraud we're sure he was going to commit they just said well or else what else was a black guy doing at a bank instead of a money box what the hell is that?oh he was going to commit a bank fraud they didn't even have a story did they even try to explain no and their initial statement had nothing to do with that the initial statement completely overlooked that and in fact in their press conference they said irrespective of the reasons why he left irrespective of the fact that everything was because this cop chased down this innocent man and he clearly wasn't detained otherwise they would have said it they want you to forget all that it's just this hypothetical about what this guy might have done in the future and they say we are certain that he was going to commit bank fraud it's their way of justifying a murder by one of their cops and then they said it was an accident because you know sometimes I accidentally pull my revolver turn off the safety and shoot somebody in the back of the head yeah and that's just they will go to any length to defend a criminal cop public or criminal cop the thin blue line is what matters the rights, the liberties and the lives of the people are nothing to them they don't care about protecting anyone if it comes down to an innocent person's life or a potential reprimand of a cop they will dispense with the innocent person's life in a heartbeat I have seen it too many times and every single time someone goes into the automatic defense mode of well not all cops are bad well we need cops well they do more good than harm all they are doing is enabling a system that allows these criminal corrupt cops to destroy the lives of peaceful people who haven't committed any crimes and we need to get away from that we need to call out the bad cops and we need to call out the people who engage in the nonsense arguments we try to gloss over the crimes by saying well not all cops are bad of course they are how many of the cops who showed up at this obvious second degree murder arrested the cop who did it none of them how many cops have ever showed up at the scene of one cop killed somebody and the other cop goes oh man has that ever happened in all of American history I seriously doubt it it may have happened at some point and then to listen to the police union rep crying his tears about how dare someone leak the coroner report oh boo hoo it's so unfair here let us smear the dead man all damn day but don't leak the coroner report that describes the bullet wound yeah and you know they're hypocrites and what we have the ability to do is to change the conversation and to leave the talking point and to stop allowing APD and the police union to paint the picture for the public what we can do is we can paint the picture before that and we can get people to automatically assume when a cop killed someone or when a cop goes to testify there's a really good chance that cop is lying and I want to see proof as opposed to well the cop said it so therefore it must be true ok now you got 3 and a half 4 minutes to tell us all about this summit and how you need to raise some money and how awesome it's going to be and where it's going to be and everything that you can well this summit is going to be the capstone of our first full year as a people's streets project it's going to be at the AT&T conference center on this Saturday August 17th and where is that?it's on MLK on the south side of UT campus in Austin, Texas it's going to be free to the public free food, free child care everyone should come we have amazing keynotes to include Bobby Steele, co-founder of the Black Campus Party Bradley Balco, who just wrote Rise as a Wayward Cop he's a writer for Huffington Post, formerly with Reason we have Carlos Miller of Photography Is Not a Crime Peter Coplock, we have B. Dolan we're going to be singing and filming a police song Tatiana Moreau is singing a People's Streets song it's going to be an amazing event it's going to be the biggest police accountability summit the United States has seen in a decade and it's going to propel this movement forward we have 15 chapters throughout the country by the end of 2013 we'll probably have 50 and I want people to be part of this movement and show up to the event and whether or not they can attend please go to peacefulstreets.com/donate we're giving to the public for free so that we can pay the venue pay for the food and pay for the speakers fees and travel costs that are associated with it so go to peacefulstreets.com/donate so you can give a little bit to help us cover this shortfall because this is a movement that actually is going to have great impact this is actually going to be much better money spent than pretty much any political candidate donation that you've ever made so how much more money do you need?we need about $17,000 more dollars to make it work and I'm working real hard to raise that money every single donation counts even people who are in a tough spot financially can afford to give $1-$5 please go and donate every single dollar counts we need $17,000 to make this event a success to explode this international movement to take it yeah hey listen I think this this summit could itself be a national news story this is CNN worthy type organization and of course it's such an important topic and as we've been talking about more and more just regular people are starting to see it this very same way and I don't know if you can really get national TV coverage I sure hope you can but this is certainly going to be that big of a deal and I sure hope that people who can afford to help will really go ahead and break out the funds write a check peacefulstreets.org and help Antonio help the rest of the people organizing this thing to really make this thing huge peacefulstreets.com peacefulstreets.com oh did I say org?peacefulstreets.com ok perfect I sure hope I can make it I'm not exactly sure but I'm going to do everything I can to see you there Antonio great thank you I look forward to it alright thanks very much for your time on the show I really appreciate it alright everybody sorry I screwed up that web address it's peacefulstreets.com/donate peacefulstreets.com/donate on August the 17th this Saturday at councilforthenationalinterest.org and click donate under about us at the top of the page that's councilforthenationalinterest.org hey y'all Scott Horton here for wallstreetwindow.com Mike Swanson is a successful former hedge fund manager whose site is unique on the web subscribers are allowed a window into Mike's very real main account and receive announcements and explanations for all his market moves the Federal Reserve has been inflating the money supply to finance the bank bailouts and terror war overseas so Mike's betting on commodities, mining stocks, European markets and other hedges against a depreciating dollar.
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