Retired St. Louis Police captain Steve Mueller on fallen comrade David Dorn

The ex-cop offers solutions for how to rebuild trust in the law enforcement community.

Full transcript: 

John Solomon:

Hello America and welcome to a new edition of John Solomon Reports, the podcast from Just The News where this weekend, we had a lot of news on the COVID front, on the protest front, on the Russia investigation of the investigators front. We're going to try to get to all of that today. And what I'm going to try to do, we all often talk about gloom and doom and wrongdoing and accountability, but today I'm going to give you three reasons to be optimistic. One, a reason to be optimistic about COVID-19. Two, a reason to be optimistic about police and American's relations with our law enforcement officers. And three, a reason to be optimistic about the Russia case.

John Solomon:

And then when we're done with that, we're going to swing over and talk to Steve [Mueller 00:00:49], a former police captain in the St. Louis Police Department that made it through two very big riotous situations in the aftermath of Michael Brown and after a second police shooting in Missouri. So Ferguson and elsewhere, he's going to bring his thoughts on how we solve the problem with America in America, with our distrust between African American communities and police departments, how we better train our officers, how we help them relieve stress, how we teach them how to deal with different circumstances than they're used to dealing with, and how we alleviate some of the jobs that we're now asking them to do that law enforcement and police officers were never asked to do.

John Solomon:

Steve's got some really, really big thoughts. He's done a lot of thinking on this since his retirement from the St. Louis Police Department, he's a respected voice. We'll also talk about the tragic killing over the weekend or last week of a retired St. Louis police captain, who was a colleague of Mueller's. He talks about the extraordinary sacrifices that our officers make. Really great insightful thoughts from a man who was on the front lines of law enforcement for nearly 38 years. But first, we're going to go to commercial break. When we come back, we're going to talk about three reasons to be optimistic from news that comes from Just The News. We hope you'll stick around to listen to that. And then our great interview with the retired St. Louis Police Captain Steve Mueller.

John Solomon:

All right, folks. Welcome back from the commercial break. And as promised, we're going to have a conversation today with Steve Mueller, the former St. Louis police captain, who has done a lot of thinking about race relations and community relations between police and communities. Going to be a fascinating conversation with a lot of bright new ideas to put on the table. And we're going to talk a little bit about some of the news on Just The News in a second, but first you just heard from some of our sponsors and advertisers. And I want to ask you that if you like what we do at Just The News, if you like John Solomon Reports, please support those advertisers, go buy their products, go subscribe to their services. And if you want to find another way to support Just The News Reporting, go to our brand new store jtnshop.com, where we have lots of great gifts for dad for Father's Day like lobster tails and money clips and things and gadgets for the phone, lots of great high quality gifts for dad for Father's Day.

John Solomon:

And then a great point is every time you buy something from the store, you'll be supporting our journalism as well. All right, so as an investigative reporter, I often talk about tough subjects, things that involve accountability and wrongdoing and taxpayers' money being wasted and political ethics being violated. But today I want to talk about some reasons for optimism, because I see so many headlines in our news organizations today suggesting doom and gloom. That Americans have lost faith in their country, they think our best days are behind us and our worst days are ahead, but I have a very different view.

John Solomon:

I still believe America's best days are ahead of us. That everything from our increasing economy to the innovation of the American spirit and the great companies that we produce every decade, and companies like Amazon and Twitter and Facebook, the world envies us for our extraordinary capabilities. And even though we're in a moment of strife, COVID-19, the George Floyd deaths, the riots, the political tensions in Washington, all seem to have us a little on the downside. I will tell you that there's lots of reasons to be optimistic.

John Solomon:

And so today what I decided to do was to pluck three headlines from justthenews.com that give me, and hopefully you, a reason for optimism. And let me start with the first one, because we've been dealing with the pandemic since early this year. And the good news is the number of deaths are going down, the number of hospitalizations is going down, and my good friend and colleague Daniel Payne had a very important story on Just The News, the last 48 hours. And that says that doctors across the world are offering a preliminary, but very encouraging report that the coronavirus may be losing steam, becoming less deadly. It's morphing, its viral structure is changing, and as it gets changed more and more, it's becoming less lethal and less toxic to the body meaning more people are surviving it. And it could mean that this thing will fizzle itself out and burn itself out, if like most respiratory viruses in America do.

John Solomon:

So that would be much better news than some of the early predictions of medical experts here in the United States like Dr. Anthony Fauci and others. Who've been talking around a second round in the fall, maybe having to stick out the pandemic for a couple of years, on and off social distancing, all the things that we've heard time and again in the media. But if you talk to Yitzhak Ben-Israel, a professor at Tel Aviv University, or the hospital director at San Raffaele Hospital in Italy, [Albertos Engrile 00:06:09]. Or just much closer to home, folks at the hospital at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, all of them are seeing clear and strong signs that the coronavirus, COVID-19, has morphed and as it has become morphed, its genetic capabilities are changing and it's becoming less lethal and sort of bleeding out or sequencing out.

John Solomon:

That's what happened with an earlier coronavirus, 2003 SARS. And so there's some optimism here that maybe, just maybe, if we keep this trend lined up, that this virus could play itself out and that the worst of it is in our rear view mirror. That would be great news for all of us who've been stuck at home, lost jobs, who've lost loved ones, and who have suffered through two or three months of isolation and lots of deprivation, lots of fear. This would all be good. We're seeing these reports from all over the country. I see in Spain, in Pittsburgh, Arizona State, Israel; there seems to be a growing confidence, a growing belief that maybe, just maybe, the worst of COVID-19 has left us.

John Solomon:

And let's hope that's true. One early sign, New York City, which was ground zero for us for a long time in the pandemic had its first day without a COVID-19 death in over three months, that happened over the weekend. A good reason to be optimistic right there. New York is phasing up and reopening. So are many of the other states around the country. And soon, hopefully we'll all be back to a life as more normal than what we've seen. And I think that's a reason to celebrate and be happy and not to fret much longer.

John Solomon:

Now a second reason to find some optimism, to not think the world is as bad as maybe the news media has made it to be the last few weeks, is a new poll that we have out with our great pollster, Scott Rasmussen, one of my favorite political analysts in the world and a truly great pollster. And today the Just The News poll out finds that 72% of voters, including a majority of black voters have a favorable view of their local police department. In other words, they like their local cops. They like their police department.

John Solomon:

They're not thinking about defunding them as some liberal activists have started to do. They're not thinking that there is widespread systemic abuse of police power. That is a very positive thing to know that a majority of Americans, a super majority, have confidence in their police department. And at least 51% of black voters, obviously less than white voters, but still a majority have a general respect and a favorable view of their police department. So the next time you see an officer and you see the debate and you see the allegations of charges and abuse and systemic racism, remember that most Americans aren't there right now.

John Solomon:

Sure, They're all upset about the George Floyd death. We all are. It was tragic, it was unnecessary. It was completely inappropriate. But I think at the end of the day, what's really great about this is that most Americans can see past an isolated bad cop incident and still see the good that their police departments bring to their community. Whether it's through Police Athletic Leagues or Police Explorer Posts that reach out to young people, or just the everyday work that law enforcement officers do to keep us safe, to protect our children, to help find lost ones and to make us all go to bed at night, feeling a little safer. Sure, we've got some work ahead of us, no doubt about it, and these riots have behind them, some real sentiments, particularly the peaceful protesters. They really are concerned. They want to do better in their relationship with their police department, but it doesn't mean the baby and the bath water all have to be thrown out.

John Solomon:

Certainly that's the message of our poll. And I thought I'd pass that along. If you want to go take a look at the deep dive in the data, you can go to justthenews.com right now and you'll be able to find that story. The headline is, "Poll finds 72% of voters, including most black voters, have a favorable view of local police departments." So, that's a second reason for optimism. A second reason to think that the world isn't as gloomy and doomy as we make it out to be.

John Solomon:

And finally, the third one, this one's a little bit more special, more unique for those who have been crying out for accountability and the Russia collusion investigation, in the investigation of the investigators. I obtained over the weekend and reported a list of the 33 key players in the Russia collusion case who are now likely to be subpoenaed by the Senate, by Senator Ron Johnson, the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. What does this mean? It means that real people are going to be put under oath to answer for their conduct, to resolve discrepancies in earlier testimony to understand what was really going on in all of these moments in the Russia investigation that have us scratching our head, wondering if something untoward, illegal, improper has happened.

John Solomon:

We're going to see a massive amount of testimony, a massive amount of document production. And after three long years of playing a game of hurry up and wait, remember we had to wait for the Robert Mueller report. We couldn't do investigation until he was done. Then we had to wait for the Inspector General Michael Horowitz at the Justice Department to finish his report. And then they said, "Well, wait, we got to declassify the documents." Well guess what? All of those have happened, there's no more waiting. And now, Senator Ron Johnson has the power to subpoena people as he needs to get answers, to bring accountability, to fully figure out what happened, how we ended up sustaining for three years an FBI criminal investigation that lacked any proof of wrongdoing against the president.

John Solomon:

And he's not the only one that's going to be doing it. Later this week, we expect Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, Lindsey Graham, he's the guy that had Rod Rosenstein before his committee last week. We expect him to get subpoena authority as well. He's targeting as many as 50 people. We are going to get all of the answers we finally have wanted, even as we wait for John Durham and Bill Barr to determine if any criminal action has occurred. But in the meantime, I'm going to give you some names of some of the people who are on the list of subpoenas, potential subpoenas that Senator Ron Johnson has been given authority to call and let me just walk through some of them. Some are pretty obvious names, right? James Comey is a Former Chief Counsel, James Baker, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the FBI lovebirds who played a critical role running the Russia investigation.

John Solomon:

Obama's Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, the former CIA Director John Brennan, the Former National Security Advisor Susan Rice. All of those people, we know why they're being called because they either were involved in a masking, they were involved in the Flynn probe. They were deeply involved in Crossfire Hurricane. So those are some big names and big fish. And there's a lot of things that can be resolved by sworn testimony. For instance, there are discrepancies between Comey and Brennan over the Intelligence Community Assessment that Russia tried to help Trump win the 2016 election. Not everybody believes that conclusion and we'd like to know what they know about that. There's also a discrepancy between Comey and Clapper over who briefed President Obama about the intercept of Mike Flynn's call with the Russian ambassador. They have different stories. This could help resolve that, the documents could help resolve that.

John Solomon:

Another key witness that I think a lot of the senators are looking forward to questioning is a guy named Bill Priestap, a former FBI Assistant Director of Counter Intelligence. He was Pete Strzok's boss in the Russia collusion case. He reported up directly to Andy McCabe, the Deputy Director, and I think senators and their investigative staff want to resolve this question because it appears from text messages, from emails, from handwritten notes that there might've been some friction between McCabe and Priestap over how to pursue or whether to pursue Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Remember an FBI agent who investigated Flynn for five months recommended in January 2017 to shut down the investigation because there was no further need. They found no derogatory information, no evidence of criminality, no evidence of counter-intelligence threat to Mike Flynn. And yet the higher-ups in the FBI; Strzok, McCabe, Comey kept the investigation going.

John Solomon:

It appears that Priestap has some handwritten notes. There are some text messages, third-party text messages between Strzok and Page. It seemed to suggest that Priestap did not feel comfortable with that approach. And remember Priestap's own handwritten notes have these remarkable quotes suggesting that the Bureau might be quote, "Playing games with Flynn." And someone, he or someone else, was questioning whether the goal was to catch him in a lie, quote, "So we can prosecute him or get him fired." So Priestap could become a very, very important witness in this. His documents are already important to the overall investigation. Now getting the chance to question him about the evidence that's emerged in the last few months, last few weeks, quite frankly, could be a very, very big moment in this case.

John Solomon:

Some other people or people that were involved in unmasking, getting Flynn's name unredacted in intercepts and looking at his overseas conversations without a warrant, people like Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, and his Former Deputy Sarah Raskin. They're on the list. They're among the people who were involved in unmasking. And I think that they're going to be on, they are on the subpoena list, likely to be questioned if possible. Then there are three people at the State Department who had interactions with Christopher Steele. They include the Former Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland who ran Russia Policy for President Obama, the Former Deputy Assistant Secretary Kathleen Kavalec and a Former Deputy at the State Department named Jonathan Weiner. Kavalec is very important for those of you who followed my reporting over the last few years, it was about a year ago, this month I think it might've been, that I broke the story that Kavalec had met with Steele and taken some handwritten notes. This is on October 16 just before they take the Steele dossier at the FBI and use it to support their First Vice Warrant targeting the Trump Campaign.

John Solomon:

Kavalec met with Steele and during and after the meeting, she raised some various serious questions in her own handwritten notes and memos, including the possibility that Steele's information was bad. For instance, he told her, according to her notes that the operation to hack American political accounts was run or funded out of the Russians consulate in Miami. The Russians don't have such a consulate in Miami, Kavalec's notes noted. She also noted that Steele had told her he had an election day deadline to get this information out, meaning he wasn't worried about the FBI. He had a political deadline and third, the notes quoted him as saying, acknowledging he was leaking to the Washington Post and the New York Times, something that obviously eventually got him fired at the FBI, leaking. Christopher Steele terminated as a confidential human source. So Kavalec had these extraordinary, an extraordinary interaction with Steele. She then wrote the FBI conveying some of her concerns and information. She could be a very important witness.

John Solomon:

And finally, there are two names on here that we haven't talked about often, but for me personally, have evoked some mystery and intrigue for some time. And now they're on a subpoena list where senators can potentially question them and obtain documents from them. The Former New York Times Journalist Sidney Blumenthal, and a private researcher named Cody Shearer. These are two men that have been together for a long time, worked together. They are two acolytes and associates of Bill and Hillary Clinton and senators want to know if they were doing research like Christopher Steele on Trump's Russia ties, whether they had shared any of that research with U.S. Government Officials and whether they had any contacts or intersection with Steele or Fusion GPS. Those are two interesting names. We haven't heard about them for a long time, but the Senate seems to be zeroing in on them. There must be a reason for that.

John Solomon:

Hopefully the documents and interviews will bring some clarity. Maybe they did nothing at all wrong. Maybe they did something that captures our imagination, but to see the entire list and to read the actual subpoena motion that Ron Johnson got approved last week, go to justthenews.com, click on the story, the actual documents embedded in the dig-in section. And you can come to some of your own conclusions about who's important, who's not. What we may learn in the next few weeks as a widespread wide scale investigation of the investigators in the Russia case takes root in the Senate after a long, long waiting time.

John Solomon:

All right, when we come back from the commercial break, as promised, we are going to talk to a retired St. Louis police captain, a man who spent 39, 38 years on the front lines of law enforcement. Steve Mueller joins us. He's a man who's done a lot of thinking after the Ferguson riots, after other police episodes around the country, including in his own community, how we can better create communication, trust tactics, between law enforcement and the communities they protect. He brings a lot to the table. We think he's got a very interesting set of ideas, and I think you're going to want to hear from him. This man was on the front lines. He worked with the police captain who was killed tragically, the retired police captain in St. Louis who was killed tragically a few weeks ago, or about a week or 10 days ago in St. Louis. And he has some really powerful statements and remembrances of that extraordinary police hero, David Dorn, who died June 2nd while he was protecting a friend's pawn shop.

John Solomon:

He was retired doing a favor for a friend when he was shot dead by a thug. That thug has been arrested and charged over the weekend in St. Louis. So Steve Mueller is going to talk about David Dorn, his recollections of a great law enforcement hero, as well as his ideas for how we get past these tense difficult days of rioting and distrust and concerns about racial discrimination in law enforcement, and the move to a more positive and complete way of fixing this great country and getting that trust back between our law enforcement agencies and the people they protect, particularly in the African American community.

John Solomon:

But even as we go to break, remember that poll result. 72% of Americans, including more than half of African Americans still have a favorable view of their police departments. That is something worth noting. It's something that you're probably not going to hear in other news media around the country. All right, we'll go into that commercial break. When we come back, Steve Mueller going to talk police in just a few seconds.

John Solomon:

All right, folks. Welcome back from the commercial break. And as promised we have the retired captain from the St. Louis Police Department, Steve Mueller joining us. Steve, good to have you with us.

Steve Mueller:

Good morning, John. Glad to be here.

John Solomon:

It's a pleasure to have you. So talk a little bit about, there was some pretty big developments over the weekend where in St. Louis, they made an arrest and charged a 24 year old man with the murder, the tragic murder, of retired Captain David Dorn. Did you know Captain Dorn?

Steve Mueller:

I did. I worked with him 37 years ago when I first came on the police department and I worked for him again later on in my career. We've been in contact constantly for the last 37 years.

John Solomon:

Amazing, a very tragic loss. He was a larger than life figure I understand.

Steve Mueller:

Yes, he was. He was quite a character and quite a gentleman.

John Solomon:

How do the police department, how will the community react to this arrest? Is this, obviously it's good news, but what's the next steps in the community addressing that the sort of violence that was waged against Captain Dorn?

Steve Mueller:

Well, that's an excellent question, how we address the violence. That's something that we've struggled with when I was on the police department the entire time, is how to control violence. As far as reacting to this, I think the entire community was shocked and outraged by it because he was so well-known and especially in the African American community and so beloved throughout the police department. I think the entire community is very glad that a person has been apprehended and charged and that hopefully he'll stay in trial, and if he's the right person, be convicted and never see the light of day.

John Solomon:

Yeah. I think a lot of people would like to see that for sure. And the relationship between the police department and the St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardener, I know there's been some strains there going all the way back to the Greitens Case and other actions she's taken. What is the state of relations just between the prosecutors and the police department in St. Louis?

Steve Mueller:

I think it's still strained. Ms. Gardner has made some statements in the past alleging that Chief Hayden had said things or told her things that he did not. They were all statements that served her and did not serve the truth. And the relationship we have in the ward office is very strained. It's a whole new environment from when Jennifer Joyce was there. And of course, we got comfortable with Jennifer and her ways, but things just seem to be unnecessarily difficult now in getting something, getting a case issued, and then we've been somewhat disappointed with the outcome of a number of cases. There are a number of homicide cases in particular that they've failed to gain convictions on.

John Solomon:

Those are disconcerting news. And I've seen that a lot of the headlines lately, just about that. Even disputes, as recently as last week over whether protesters were released, protestors who had engaged in violence were released improperly. So it seems like the strains, the strains continue on. Now, you had a chance to witness sort of two moments in police controversies, the Ferguson moment, and then the Stockley moment, and they were handled very differently at the time. I wonder if you could tell us what you learned about those two episodes and what both police and political leaders shouldn't take from those two episodes.

Steve Mueller:

Well, we learned that different protest groups need to be treated differently. I think, yeah, maybe in the beginning during the Ferguson protest, we hadn't dealt with protests, especially any that turned violent in so long. Probably, there may have been some small skirmishes if you will, but nothing major since the 1960s with the Washington New riots. And so, nobody on the department really was intimately or personally familiar with dealing with [inaudible 00:25:23] we're dealing with here. And we quickly learned, and I think properly adapted to the difference between peaceful protestors and rioters and looters.

Steve Mueller:

Probably in the very beginning, we may have lumped them all together in our minds and thought this was a civil disturbance and we need to quell it. Well, that's not really true. And we learned that probably the first day, that the peaceful protests are exactly that. They're peaceful protests and they're guaranteed under the constitution and it's our duty and responsibility to uphold the constitution and therefore support those peaceful protests. It's when they turn violent, which seems in all three instances in Ferguson, Stockley, and then today's events, occur to be happening after dark when another group of infiltrators, I'll call them, come in and stir the crowd up to do things that they did not do during the peaceful protest. And we had to learn how to recognize those differences, identify those people, and then quell those illegal actions.

John Solomon:

Yeah, that is a key thing is trying to sort through it, particularly in the fog of war too, because it's often chaotic and it's hard to tell who's who and learning those tactics I think are important. As you listen to the current debate evolve, we went from outrage over the death of George Floyd, which is understandable, to now a discussion at least on the left of defunding police departments. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what that means to you as a 30 plus year veteran of the police force and what it means to public safety, if that movement takes foot.

Steve Mueller:

My personal opinion, John, is that it is a misguided attempt to address a serious situation, the magnitude of which is being overblown. The thought of defunding the police, I mean, you're seeing what happens when we don't have sufficient policing in place, in cities like New York and here in Kansas City and Milwaukee and Columbus and Indianapolis and all over the country where police funding has suffered over the last decade or more as municipal funding has suffered. And to further defund the police department is simply going to add more chaos. What we need is more and better training, better paid officers and better equipment to allow those officers to do the proper job. I think there also has to be a realization that the police are not the go-to organization for everything that happens. Anytime after hours, if someone can't get ahold of the street department for a hole in the street, they call us. If they have a dog running loose, they don't call animal control, they call us.

Steve Mueller:

The scope of the different incidents that we're asked to handle far goes beyond what law enforcement is intended to do. And I think the further we get away from the core of law enforcement, the more spread out our forces are, the less effective we'll be at accomplishing our core mission. And that's only going to be exacerbated by defunding in any degree or as the extreme examples of Minneapolis has taken of essentially, without essentially, in fact, disorganizing their police department, disbanding it all together. Now, I don't know the specifics behind how they intend to do that. I don't think they're just going to tell everybody on Monday that they don't have a job. It'll be, I hope some sort of a progression, but still law enforcement is one of the foundations of our communities. Without law and order, no one has peace and quiet.

Steve Mueller:

There's been a lot of talk and media over several high profile incidents. And rightly so, I mean, going back to Rodney King, and even before we have cases of clearly what appears to be, and often in fact is, police abuse. But then you look at the millions and millions and millions of interactions the police have with the public every day of all races of both sexes. And we don't have that happening on a routine basis. Sometimes either a rogue cop or an officer who being a human being is in a situation he or she can't handle, doesn't know what to do with, or is dealing with emotional items from outside the job that that caused them to act them improperly, and we see those things. There has to be a protection for the innocent citizens we serve. I totally support that.

Steve Mueller:

What we saw in Minneapolis, I don't think there can be an explanation for what happened. That man should not have died. George Floyd should be with us today, but it's not the norm. And the left, in particular, is reacting. I say, overreacting as if this is the everyday occurrence and it is not, it's a rare occurrence and it's handled when it is. There are four officers who are in jail now because of what happened. Two of them had been on the job for less than a week and Officer Chauvin was training them. Now, what is a three day old officer going to do when his training officer says do this? Of course he's going to do it, he's told to do it. But that's not how the people who want to push a different narrative are discussing it.

John Solomon:

Beneath all of these struggles, and you talked about training and better equipment, and I've heard from many police professionals in the last week, the need to shrink down all of the many things that police are asked to do that aren't law enforcement related. Those are all ideas that I think have enormous merit. When you look at how to build trust in the community again, because obviously an episode like this sends distrust across the entire community, even if it's distorted in some respect, as someone who was in policing for so long, how would you go about trying to restore trust, restore conversation, restore a civility between the relations in the police department and the community it protects?

Steve Mueller:

We have to address that on several levels. I was, for about five years, in our Public Affairs Division. For four years, I was in charge of it. And we dealt very closely with the community groups and the neighborhood organizations and worked as closely as we could with media to help get messages out, positive to the police department and our relationship with the public. And I think we've gotten a little bit away from that. The structure of the Public Affairs system has changed somewhat. I don't know that it's as strong as it used to be. We really need to focus more attention on dealing positively with the public. We have a Police Explorer Program that's very possible, and it addresses youth in the ages of 14 to 18 who were maybe interested in law enforcement as a career, or at least finding out more about it. And that's a very popular program. It's something that has been around since around 1970. And we're still doing that.

Steve Mueller:

The officers on the street of course, have to also engage the public in positive ways. We can't always be the guy who comes in heavy handed and breaks up the fight, and so on and so forth. Young officers in particular, come on with a strong desire to make a difference and make things right. And sometimes we need to teach them better how to communicate with people and get things done without the use of authority, with cooperation and conversation rather than with the application of force or their authority under the law.

Steve Mueller:

So we need to deal better with the public. The public also has to look at us in a different light as well. They've got to see the reality of what we do day in and day out. And, you know, I kind of like in a way, shows like Live PD because they are fairly raw. Cops had a reputation of being sometimes restaged or set up. I don't think the current police show does that. It is delayed a bit so that they can edit, but it shows what we do. And it shows a lot of the interactions that are beyond the scope of arresting someone.

John Solomon:

And that's another part, I come from generations of law enforcement, my brother and my father and many others in my family have been in law enforcement for most of the last century. And one of the things that I know from the police side of it is also that this is a two way street, right? The public wants the appropriate response from our officers, but the lack of respect that often officers witness when they go into a circumstance adds to those tensions, but it escalates the tensions when deescalation is what you're looking for. What can community leaders do to try to close that gap? The gap of respect that often is lacking when a police officer interacts with a member of the community.

Steve Mueller:

I think a lot of local, or what I'll call micro community leaders do that, those who are in charge of their neighborhood organizations and such, we really have a good working relationship with every one of them out there. And then we have something like 67 or 68 of them in the city of St. Louis. So it's a job just to keep up with them, but we work very closely with them. The more outspoken leaders who take on citywide roles, I think could support us more there. They're in a different position because they're representing a different demographic perhaps than the micro-leaders.

Steve Mueller:

And they've got to balance their response to satisfy their constituency or their audience, as well as try and get along with the police department. And hopefully they all do try and get along with the police department, but the better our relations together and the better our relations are promoted among the public, I think the better and safer it will be for everyone. Those citywide community leaders have to maintain their credibility with their core group. I understand that. And a lot of those core groups may not always be pro-police, but there has to be a balance somewhere in between that tilts a little more towards supporting the police and a little less toward overthrowing the police.

John Solomon:

And that is the challenge right now, the fulcrum on which all this debate is resting. How much are we going to stand behind our police? And it's hard to imagine a moment in American history where defunding police would be a top priority, but at least in Minneapolis and now in some other communities, we're seeing that. Well Steve, it's been a pleasure having you on. You've done a lot of thinking in this space, you can tell. And I think your words of wisdom will be greatly welcomed by our listeners. And I hope to have you back on the show in a couple of months to check in as this story continues to evolve.

Steve Mueller:

Thank you, John. I'd be glad to.

John Solomon:

That'd be great.

John Solomon:

All right, folks, that wraps up another edition of John Solomon Reports. We're going to be back on Thursday with a whole bunch of new news and exclusive interviews, but between now and then when you need a news fix, when you want to just get the facts, news without a point of view or slant. Information without the indoctrination, news not noise, just go to justthenews.com where all of our great reporters, Daniel Payne, Christine Dolan, Carrie Sheffield, Nick Ballasy, Susan Keating, and many many more are writing straight, factual, down the middle news articles about issues in America that you should care about and around the world as well. We'll be back on Thursday with another edition of John Solomon Reports. Until then, be safe. And remember, there's a lot to be optimistic in America, even in the midst of all this strife. I'm John Solomon, and you've been listening to John Solomon Reports, the podcast at justthenews.com.