828: Minor Crimes Division

Ira Glass

Snakes, zombies, sharks, heights. Speaking in public, the list of fears is endless. But while youre clutching your blanket in the dark, wondering if the sound in the hall was actually a footstep, the real danger is in your hand when youre behind the wheel. And while you might think a great white shark is scary, whats really terrifying and even deadly is distracted driving. Eyes forward.

Dont drive distracted. Brought to you by NHTSA and the ad council. Hey there, podcast listeners. Ira here with a quick announcement before the show. And that is, if you have not heard, Sarah Koenig is back with a new season of cereal.

Gersh Kuntzman

And it is about Guantanamo. And I just want to say, even if you think you know everything, you want to know about Guantanamo already, and even if you think you have no interest at all in Guantanamo, you want to listen to the first episode of this show and check out what they found. What's happened is that enough time has passed that people are talking. Guards, prisoners, interrogators, commanders, detainees. And what Sarah and her co host, Dana Chivis are interested in is what was it like?

What was it like to be inside this experiment that the United States wheeled into existence? This weird prison and court that we made from scratch with its own surreal rules, popped in the middle of the Caribbean, where in their off hours, the young military personnel were drinking and partying like crazy cereal. I'd say kind of invented a whole way of telling stories in podcast form. And you will hear they still do it better than anybody. Serial season four, Guantanamo from the New York Times and serial productions.

Get it wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, here's today's episode. A quick warning. There are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org dot.

Ladies and gentlemen, let's be honest about something. Most of us, we see wrongdoing out in the world. Somebody breaking the law out in the open. Flagrantly, most of us do nothing, no matter how many movies we've seen, where the big lesson is that it only takes one plucky, courageous person to make a stand. We've got stuff to do.

People are expecting us. We don't go to trouble, even if it would be so easy, if the crime that we're witnessing is minor and nonviolent and sort of outrageous. So here's a good one. I'm gonna get off the bike for this one. Well, please meet Gersch Kunzman.

Guy in his fifties, gray beard, quick with a friendly smile. We're riding bikes around lower Manhattan looking for illegal license plates. What mostly happens is I'll be biking along. And when you've looked at literally thousands of plates, you can see right out of the corner of your eye if something's wrong. Often even just a fake plate will have a different glint than the sun.

Michael Harriot

In this guy's case, I could see it's a covered plate. Covered plate, meaning it's in a little frame with some sort of plastic over the plate. Now, plate covers are illegal in New York. This one's especially egregious because I don't know if you notice. And I'll just paint the word picture for your radio listeners.

Gersh Kuntzman

It's a shaded one, shaded with some special stuff. So if you're in the car directly behind this car, it looks normal. But if you look down on the plate from above, the way traffic cameras do, it's black, unreadable. So there's traffic cameras that catch you when you speed a runaway light. They do not deliver this person to justice.

The ticket or tolls. Cameras that read your plate and charge you $16 when you cross a bridge or tunnel into New York. That doesn't work on this car. This person drives through for free every time. Taxpayers lose an estimated $194 million a year in lost fines and tolls because of unreadable plates.

And most of the people gersh catches doing this, evading the law this way, are cops. And once you start seeing it, you can't stop seeing it. The majority have been people in law enforcement, court officers, firefighters, cops, das, federal officials. And you know that they're police officers because you see stuff on their dashboards, stuff like this. Yeah, placards.

Michael Harriot

A lot of placards. Hot spots are near precincts, near firehouses, and definitely near courthouses. We're actually next to a courthouse in a detention center on a short block at Baxter and Bayard. And this car that Grisha spotted, a gray Audi, is one of four that we see with obscured plates. You're looking in the.

Gersh Kuntzman

On the front dashboard. What's it say there? Well, so this is actually the Manhattan detention complex. To authorized parking. This is the Department of Corrections employee placard.

Michael Harriot

But if you notice, the plate was from Jersey. If the owner of the gray Audi is an employee of the New York City Department of Corrections, they're supposed to live in New York. It's forbidden for them to live in Jersey. And so they seem to be evading traffic cameras. Maybe they're living illegally out of state, and they've also got darkly tinted windows, which are illegal in New York, which means this is exactly the kind of scofflaw that Gersh has appointed himself to take action against.

Gersh Kuntzman

That's what Gersh is different from you and me. It just. What it is, it just rankles me. It's just like it's hiding in plain sight. He looks again at the placard under the guards windshield.

Michael Harriot

I mean, this guy's a real dick. I can't see he's covered up when the placard expires. My guess is this is an expired placard anyway. And he may not even work for the city of New York anymore, but he's decided he wants to park for free in an illegal parking zone. Now, what I will often do in these situations is I'll remove the plate cover and stick it on the dash.

I don't steal anything, but I do want the guy to know he's breaking the law. And a guy who works for Curtis corrections certainly should know what happens to people who break the law. And I have to look at it to see, like, can I even get it off? Yeah, I could get. Oh, no.

He's got a special screw on this one. The four screws on the plate need an Allen wrench. I'm gonna see if my Allen wrench will fit this one. If it will, I'll take it off, and we'll have some fun. Okay, so you're pulling an Allen wrench.

Out of your wallet? Well, I always have an Allen wrench in my wallet. You don't have an Allen wrench in your wallet? I don't have the right size Allen wrench. Let me check my bag.

I travel with a set of tools. He looks, but turns out he doesn't have the right tool. So he leaves the license cover on the car. That's rare for Gersh and not be able to fix the situation. Most times, what he finds is drivers have painted over a letter or a number on the plate or bent the plate so it's unreadable where they've crammed leaves in the license plate holder.

Gersh Kuntzman

They're actually fake leaves with magnets you can buy online for this purpose. I don't know if you're familiar with that. Gersch removes the leaves, unbends the plates, repaints the letters and numbers with a paint marker. So in the end, the plate is perfectly legible again. He also shoots a video.

Gersh always shoots a gleeful little video post online. I usually start in the front. He pulls out his phone selfie style. And it's record. Well, hey, everybody, it's Gersh comes and it's good Friday.

Michael Harriot

And I want to say it's a great Friday. Look at this. I got a corrections officer with a New Jersey car. It's a pretty fancy car with illegal tinted windows. And look at this.

On the back of the car, he's got this weird shadowy kind of plate cover, which doesn't show. He shows the viewers the plate cover and how it hides the plate from the cameras. He's done about 250 of these videos. Gersh's friends have tried to convince him to stop, scared some driver is going to freak out on him and really hurt him. So lately, he's agreed not to do this alone, though sometimes he says he cant stop himself.

Gersh Kuntzman

The way Gersh got into this, hes a journalist who writes about these sorts of issues. He runs a traffic and transit news site called streets blog. He says that when speed enforcement cameras went on 24/7 in New York, this is back in August 2022, and lots of people back then started defacing their plates to avoid the cameras. He didnt get involved in the issue himself until a friend of his, a guy named Adam White, personal injuries lawyer and a safe streets activist, decided to take action. Adam saw an suv whose plate was obscured by a piece of plastic.

Michael Harriot

So he moved the piece of plastic. Unfortunately for him, he didn't look in the car. The guy was sitting right there. The guy was also a cop, to be precise. The guy was not a real NYPD cop.

Gersh Kuntzman

He was in a local neighborhood patrol. So he called the cops and the cops arrested Adam and charged him with criminal mischief. Now, that's the most hysterical part of it, because criminal mischief is generally like a graffiti charge. Like if you damage someone's property, you get charged with criminal mischief. In this case, it's a weird charge because he didn't actually damage anything.

Michael Harriot

He actually undamaged or repaired the damage the other guy did by covering his plate. So anyway, he was arrested, but it was dismissed. But at the same time, once he got arrested by a cop for undefacing a cop's plate, it kind of threw the whole irony ball in the air, and I felt like I should just juggle it.

Gersh Kuntzman

The first spin of the irony, Balfour grew. It was a kind of Dylan esque protest song that he wrote for his friend Adam.

Ira Glass

They'll charge you in the fourth degree. The cops call it criminal mischief. It's whatever they decree. Then maybe two days after Adam was arrested, Gersh started unvandalizing plates himself. Something clicked on me saying, wait a minute, I should try to get arrested, you know, as a newspaper reporter, as a journalist, which would be awesome, getting arrested, or even better yet, like, getting punched out by somebody on camera.

Michael Harriot

Like, this is the height of my career. I'm not gonna win a Pulitzer, but getting punched out by a cop would be awesome. That doesn't happen. Not even close. The Gersh has seen some other responses by law enforcement to his videos.

Gersh Kuntzman

When he shoots one, he likes to send it to the agency that employs that particular car owner. So videos about scoffwell cops go to the NYPD, firefighters, to the fire department, and so on. And that's gotten occasional results. A former cop who was working with the DA's office resigned. And a guy that Gersh caught five times hiding his license plate with leaves resigned from the Department of Citywide Administrative Services.

Michael Harriot

Now, in fairness, I will say I think the NYPD did something, because about six months ago, I started noticing far fewer police officers were defacing or covering their plate. There have been less police officers involved in these kind of shenanigans. I still notice court officers, federal officials and firefighters. So. And then I asked the NYPD about that, and they won't even take credit for when they do something right.

Like, they're very opaque agency, which is very frustrating. There are a handful of other people in New York who do this kind of license plate street justice. But Gersh is the most visible by far. Because of his videos, he's gotten the word out. At this point, Gersh's exploits have been written up in the New Yorker, in the New York Times.

Gersh Kuntzman

He's been on tv. So it's weird in some ways. Like, I've been a reporter for 30 something years in this city, and this is ultimately the most successful thing I've done in terms of bringing. Bringing light to something that is actually a real problem. Like, traffic enforcement agents are now writing more tickets for it.

That said, the wrong that Gersh is trying to correct is so small in the grand scheme of things. Why is he the person who ended up leading the crusade for unobstructed license plates? You told me he's not this way with other petty crimes. He sees somebody jumping a turnstile, he doesn't care. But this got under his skin.

A license plate seems like such basic accountability to him, but also a bit of a showman. I'm a bit of a showman. I'll admit that. Yes, I am a ham. I am a performer.

Michael Harriot

But why can't a journalist have a little fun? That's actually one of my favorite things about Gersh's videos. He looks like he's having so much fun. You know, New York life, it doesn't have a lot of joy in it. It really doesn't.

Like, it's really kind of drudgery most of the time. It's a great city, whatever, but it's drudgery. And those 20 seconds a day when I can do one of those videos, it just. I get joyful. You see me on camera and I'm smiling, and I don't know what it is.

It's just like my inner soul is just singing.

Gersh Kuntzman

Related program, minor crimes and the people who appoint themselves to stop those minor crimes. I once read this great crime writer who said that what's interesting about a murder case is that a murder reveals so much about all the people near the crime. We see who they really are. Today on our show, we demonstrate that this is not just true for a cold blooded crime in the first degree. It's true for the tiniest human infractions, like kids stealing candy or a man who twice violates the lowest level municipal offense that you can think of.

We see so much about who they are. From WBEZ Chicago cis American life, I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us.

Equine Harriet versus Harriet. Okay, so let's kick things off today with an entire system of justice set up to adjudicate the most minor sorts of crimes and misdemeanors. When Michael Harriot was a kid growing up in South Carolina in the eighties, his mom set this up, a kind of courtroom in the house to try to teach your kids all kinds of life lessons. They called it Harriet Court. And when one of the kids did something wrong, their case would be heard, a judgment would be handed down.

This ran for many, many years with all kinds of cases. And Michael says that he and his siblings all credit Harriet court with making them the people they are today. Though, when he went to talk to them about it recently, he started to. Rethink that Harriet court existed for a reason. We were bad.

Dorothy Harriot

There were four of us, me and three sisters. Shawn was the oldest. So growing up, I would describe myself as.

Ira Glass

I was a snitch. I'm just gonna say it. The tell a tale. I would say. Back then, I was the bossiest.

Cause I was the one that was always in charge, and I could spank everybody. I was the middle child, the nerd, and the know it all, the sneakiest of the bunch. Then there were the two youngest girls, Kamalita and Robin. Kamalita and Robin were like. They was just what you call the wild childs.

It was just whatever with them. If it could be done, they did it. They're gonna try it. They were born months apart, and Robin passed away some years ago. But no one ever really thought of Kamalita and Robin as individuals.

Dorothy Harriot

They were one interconnected unit, like Tom and Jerry, Bonnie and Clyde, or Earth, wind, and fire. Here's Kamalita. They used to call us the devil and Daniel Webster. Cause whatever I came up with, she would follow me, or whatever she came up with. I'm going with you, girl.

Ira Glass

We doing it together. We went to school together. We wore the same clothes. We graduated the same year, so she had my back.

Dorothy Harriot

And then there was my mom. My mom was not one of those, because I said so kind of moms. She wanted us to know that we would be heard and that logic and reason should govern the world and our household. So she created Harriet court as a solution to our shenanigans. My mom was two people at once.

She was part of a fundamentalist holiness religion, and she was this pro black, black pantherish activist who was almost obsessively adamant about our education. She didn't really trust white people with her kids. So, for a while, we were homeschooled. As a result, so much of what we learned came from tv, including Harriet court proceedings. We hired each other as attorneys and used phrases like, ladies and gentlemen of the jewelry and I beseech thee, we beseeched each other a lot.

One of the earliest cases was Kamalita and Robin versus all this candy. As a rule, we were not allowed to have candy growing up, except for once a week, usually on Fridays. That was tough for my sister Kamalita, who was obsessed with candy. We used to get the hubba bubba. Cause it used to be strawberry or banana, and it was five pieces.

Ira Glass

So we got a pack of lifesavers and either chicklets or hubba bubble bubble gum. I don't love candy like y'all love candy. Me and Robin loved candy. We love candy. So take us through the candy case.

Well, me and Robin stole the candy from the corner store, like, so me. And shine thought y'all found some money and bought that candy. No, we stole the candy. We stole the candy, but we kept stealing it. And stealing it was so much candy.

It was like Halloween candy. Like, I'm talking about, like, bags you would get and take from your kids at Halloween. That's how much candy it was. But there was no place for anybody to hide it. So we hid it under the mattress.

And me and Robin kept saying, just put it in the mattress. They ain't gonna find it. Just put it in the mattress. So we put it on the mattress. And then one day, Mama said, well, we gonna clean from under the mattress.

And she flipped the mattress, and the candy was under the mattress. So we had to go to court and tell where we got the candy from. Why we had so much. Cause it was a lot like two piggly wiggly bags full. Robin and Kamalita put me on retainer as their defense attorney in exchange for them doing one of my household chores.

Dorothy Harriot

We gathered in the den, which we call the middle room, where Chief Justice Dorothy Harriot presided. She would sit in the canary yellow la z boy, and we'd plead our case from the couch witness box. We swore each other in on a copy of our favorite book. Encyclopedia Brown was mine. And I came up with a defense that I still argue should have worked, because, remember, we weren't allowed to eat candy.

My defense was that she didn't catch y'all eating candy. She can't prove that y'all ate the candy. Y'all just had the candy. How she know y'all wasn't trying to sell candy? No, no, we was eating that candy.

I knew y'all was eating it, but that was my defense. I don't remember exactly, but mom would have cross examined Kamalita and Robin. She probably asked them if they understood why we couldn't have candy. It was because I had ADHD, which my mom believed got worse with sugar. After we'd made our arguments, our mom dismissed Harriet court by saying, okay, make good choices.

Then she'd deliberate before issuing a written opinion. Yes, a written opinion which would be taped to our doors. Describe how you used to feel, like, in your body when you was waiting for her to decide. Oh, my God. Like the world was gonna come to an end.

Ira Glass

Like it was anything. Might be the next day, it might be the same night. You didn't know what was gonna happen, and you would just take the paper and it'd be folded up, and you have to read your decision. But you know what? She never said, well, let me consult with somebody else.

It was all over. You, right? Like, she didn't never consult with anybody else. Consult with anybody. No appeals.

It was what she said. That was it.

Dorothy Harriot

Sentences were usually something like a week of extra chores or two weeks in solitary bedroom confinement, which happened so frequently, it eventually became known as being on punishment. And because we didn't go to school and only had each other to play with. Those in room incarceration periods seemed unbearably long, and that was the point. The punishment gave you time to learn from your mistakes. In the candy case, mom came down hard on Kamalita and Robin.

They were on punishment for a long time, and they both never stole candy again.

For years, I've remembered the candy case as an example of the court working the best. But when I talked to Kamalita about it recently, she made me look at things a little differently. We was on punishment a long time, but it didn't matter with me and Robin. Cause we used to always, like, do what we wasn't supposed to do. Anyway, Mama was at work, so me and Robin would do whatever we wanted to do up until we knew it was time for her to come home.

Ira Glass

So it really didn't matter. Kamalita didn't stop misbehaving. I can just see her sitting in her room, thinking over the lesson she learned from the candy case. Find a better hiding spot. So maybe it wasn't the perfect criminal justice system.

Dorothy Harriot

And the more I think about it, there seem to be a lot of cases like this, ones that showed, in retrospect, that our beloved Harriet court was kinda flawed. Like the case of Sean versus the big lie, which started when my mom eventually allowed us to attend public school. I think I might have been in fifth or 6th grade, and I went to the school, and I told him I was dying. I forgot about that. Go ahead.

Ira Glass

I told him I was dying. I had this undetermined disease that nobody knew about. And literally, the whole grade was like, oh, my goodness, she's dying. They don't know how much time she gonna have. So they would come in, sign my desk, and, like, do all of that stuff.

And so even the teachers, they was, like, feeling bad. The principal thought they were feeling bad. Shawn's classmates raised money for her unnamed terminal illness and even signed a huge poster that was supposed to go in her casket. She kept this light going for months until my mom found out about it. I think it was, like, parent teacher conference or something.

And so my mom went, and the teacher was just expressing, you know, how she was feeling bad and asking about everything that was going on. She even showed her, you know, how I had the people signing on my desk and everything. And, oh, boy. When she got home, she asked me, was like, when you pose to be dying, and then I just kind of, you know how you, like, lose your breath? You're like, huh?

And she was like, so you're gonna be sick for real. You're really gonna be sick for real. Lying was a big deal in our house. We weren't even allowed to say the word lie. Shawn called for a Harriet court trial, but really it was just a delay tactic.

Dorothy Harriot

She knew she didn't have a case. She was just trying to buy time, hoping my mom would cool off. It didn't work. The case went to trial, and my mom put her on punishment for weeks. Shawn never told another lie like that again.

Unless you count that time. She lied about going to spring break in 94.

But the thing I realized when I talked to her was she wasn't just acting out for no reason. This new school was a totally different environment. At home, she was the tough older sister, but at school, she was crying every day. It was a culture shock for us. Totally different school, totally different neighborhood.

Ira Glass

I mean, predominantly white people. Like, literally, I have a lot of friends. I only had, like, maybe three or four friends, like, I really did. And I think that was probably the reason why I actually started doing it. And then I was like, hmm, it's getting me some attention, so I'm just gonna keep going.

Dorothy Harriot

Looking back, I cant say that Harriet court worked in this instance. Sean was lonely and she needed attention, so she acted out by telling a lie. My mom punished her for the lie, but it didnt help her make friends like the real world criminal justice system. Harriet court didnt address the root cause of the problem it was trying to fix.

Over the years, as we learned about the real world, Harriet court became more complex. The ass case addressed the no profanity rule. We used the court to establish precedent. Like, I was doing it first, which stated that you weren't breaking the no hitting rule as long as you were moving your arm and yelling. I was doing this first.

After all, it wasn't your fault if someone got clocked upside the head. You were doing it first. We even used it to overturn previous verdicts, like the one that enforced our religion's ban against women wearing pants. In Harriet court, we successfully convinced my mom to overturn the no pants rule so Sean could play softball. And as with any justice system, over time, my sisters and I found loopholes that we could use to subvert our mom's strict rules.

We became a team of semi cricket lawyers. The esteemed firm of Harriet. Harriet, Harriet. And another Harriet. Sometimes we faced each other in court.

Which brings us to the last case, which is about Michael v. Syrup. As the oldest, one of Shawn's many responsibilities was operating the washing machine. She was the only sibling allowed to do it. So I was a person that had to, like, wash the clothes.

Ira Glass

I would wash the clothes, and the other girls would, like, either put them in the dryer or hang them out or whatever need to be done to them. And, like, he didn't do anything except empty the trash when he was told. I had to do the yards, I had to lift all the stuff in the house. Like, how was that, though? How often was that?

That was not that often. That was not that often.

Dorothy Harriot

Shawn always felt like I wasn't doing enough. And as the person whose sisters nicknamed him the absent minded professor, I was the only sibling who regularly forgot to give her my clothes. One day, she finally reached the tipping point and exacted her revenge. I literally was like, I'm not washing your clothes anymore. I'm like, I'm not doing it anymore.

Ira Glass

And I washed everybody clothes except his that week. But the next day was picture day. I think you left that important detail aisle. It was picture day. I was furious.

Dorothy Harriot

Sean's petty vengeance meant I wouldn't have my favorite shirt on one of the most important events on the elementary school calendar, picture day. And if you wonder why I couldn't just convince her to do another load, that wasn't even an option. Two loads in one week in the Harriet house. Does my mom look like Daddy Warbucks to you? So, because of my mom's one load per week rule, I had no choice but to find a loophole that could get me what I wanted.

Ira Glass

So we would, like, get our clothes out at night. For some reason, that particular night, I didn't get my clothes out. And then when I went to really go get my clothes out, and it was like, Sarah all over my clothes, like, in the drawer I had snuck. Into her room with a bottle of cane patch syrup and poured it all over her clothes. Of course she was upset, but this was all part of my plan.

Dorothy Harriot

Now that we were both without clothes for picture day, there was only one place we could settle our differences. Harriet Court.

I argued that the solution was for my mom to grant a one time special exemption from the one load rule I won. She was like, well, since you gotta wash clothes anyway, you might as well wash his clothes since you gotta wash him anyway. So I was like, I literally had to wash all my clothes over, plus his clothes. And he was the one to put the syrup on my clothes. Shawn had to pay for a crime that I committed while I escaped without punishment.

In the moment when I won, I felt great. I ran around the middle room, gloating about my superior legal skills. But when I went to my bedroom afterwards, which was next to the laundry room, I could hear her sobbing to herself as she tossed those clothes in the washing machine. I felt terrible. I hurt my sister just to get my way.

And I'd done it in the worst way possible. By weaponizing an institution that was created to give us justice. I was just another lawyer gaming the system. Perry Mason would never.

30 years later, my sisters and I have never really talked to our mom about Harriet court. She was the person who wrote the rules and made the decisions. But I've never asked her if her system worked as she intended or why she started it in the first place. Turns out, she didn't just create it to keep us in check. My secret ambition was to go to law school.

Ira Glass

Even now, today, my favorite tv show is Judge Judy. I watch Judge Judy. I watch Trish. Ladies and gentlemen of the jewelry, my mom, the honorable Dorothy Harriot. Well, we used to watch people's court.

Y'all had to watch people's court. Cause I watched it all the time. And I can't remember that judge name. Judge Watner. Judge Watner.

Dorothy Harriot

Judge Wapner. Yeah. But those are my favorite shows even today. I should have gone to law school. I didn't.

Ira Glass

Cause I didn't think I could pass the LSAT. I probably could have, but I was afraid to take it. My mother says honestly, for her, Harriet Court was partly for her own enjoyment. She loved arguing with me, although she told me I wasn't the young legal ego I remembered, which stung in my head. I thought I was one of the most persuasive attorneys.

Dorothy Harriot

Had you already made up your mind when you rendered your decisions? Most of the time, yes. Cause I had already thought about it. Whatever we were judging and whatever we were going to court for. So our arguments didn't sway you at all?

Ira Glass

No. Cause I had already made up my mind that y'all ain't had no couth and no do right in y'all. None of y'all. So. So I'm the common leader.

So why. Why even. Why have the court? Yeah. Cause I wanted to be fair.

I wanted y'all to think I was being fair. Were you being fair? I think I was pretty fair.

Dorothy Harriot

Did you think it made us better behaved? Verse behave or no change? I don't think it really made a difference with y'all. Y'all were just bad. Nobody could come up with the things that y'all did.

Ira Glass

Y'all were just some bad children, to be honest. Today, y'all still them children. Y'all the James Avenue bad children.

Dorothy Harriot

Come to think of it, my sisters and I never really changed that much. Kamalita is still the most rebellious. Sean is still the snitch. Who will tell mom? You know, that's whiskey in Mikey's cup.

And me, I'm still the same. Let me explain why I'm correct know it all who my mom once called a right supremacist. But the court did one thing. It turned me and my sisters into a team. It was us versus the judge.

Us trying to outthink mom. I created that atmosphere on purpose, you know, I wanted you guys to know how to stand your own ground and to be honest about who you were and what you were doing. And I think I made that point. We court and made that point. It taught you guys loyalty to each other and the fact that y'all didn't snitch on each other.

Ira Glass

And y'all still don't snitch on each other. Well, Shawna did. That's who she was. She did. She told everything.

Dorothy Harriot

Talking to her, I realized that Harriet court was not some genius institution that fit perfectly into my mom's master plan. Like most parents, she was just making it up as she went along. But to us, my mom tried this amazingly ambitious thing. Because of it, we still have this almost unreasonable faith in logic and justice. And whenever we talk, our conversations end the exact same way my mom ended each session of Harriet court.

Okay. Make good choices.

Gersh Kuntzman

Michael Harriot. He's a writer for the Griot. His latest book is Black af History, the UN whitewashed Story of America. History was produced by Emmanuel Jocelyn. Coming up, a thief steal something very rare to build a spaceship.

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Ira Glass

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Gersh Kuntzman

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Micaela Blei

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Gersh Kuntzman

This is American Life from era Glass. Today's program, Minor Crimes Division. Stories of tiny acts of wrongdoing, what they say about the people who commit them and about the people whove devoted themselves to catching and punishing these acts. Weve arrived at act two of our program. Act two.

Alternate side well, you know, sometimes theres a disagreement over whether a tiny act of wrongdoing is, in fact an act of wrongdoing at all. One of our producers, Aviva de Kornfeld, has such a tale. Kaveh Zahedi, had just moved to San Francisco. He hadn't even really moved there yet. He'd just driven there with a car full of stuff, crashed at a friend's house while he looked for an apartment.

Aviva de Kornfeld

He didn't have a permit to park in his friend's neighborhood, which meant he had to move his car every 2 hours. So I would have to go every day, every 2 hours and move the car. He does this all day, every day. It's extremely annoying, but he's diligent about it. And then one day he comes out to find a parking ticket tucked under his windshield wiper.

I remember I was like, what the fuck? I just, I moved it. It's been less than 2 hours. This is wrong. I didn't do anything wrong.

I followed the rules. It was an expensive ticket, around $300. He decides to contest it. So I go to the court. And I explain to the judge what happened and she says, how far did you move it?

I said, I don't know, maybe like 30ft. Just guessing. I don't even know what 30ft looks like. And I said, why? How far are you supposed to move it?

She says, I don't know, let me look it up. So she takes out this big law book and she's like going through it and she finds a thing. She says, oh, here it is. It says here you have to move it, oh, 35ft. So I'm afraid I have to give you the ticket.

You know, you lose. I said, wait a minute. First of all, it might have been 35ft, it might have been 40ft, I don't know, I didn't measure it. Second of all, you didn't even know what the amount was. And if you don't even know what the amount was, why should I have to pay a ticket for something that you don't even know what the law is about?

No one knows. They didn't say anything about it. It's in this stupid book and it's ridiculous. Well, I'm sorry. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

Aviva de Kornfeld

Kave was upset. He turned to leave and I just couldnt accept defeat like that without saying anything. Like I wanted her to feel at least bad about it, or at least, you know, I just wanted to put some doubt in her mind that she may have been wrong. This is the kind of person Kave is. When he sees something in the world that seems wrong or ill conceived or unfair, its very hard for him not to point it out.

This is either a strength or a personality defect. He sees it as both. Caave majored in philosophy, still reads it sometimes, which is why on his way out of the courtroom, he stopped, turned back to the judge, and I know how this sounds, said, do you know the distinction between legalism and essentialism in chinese philosophy? No surprise the judge said, no, she didn't. And I said, well, the legalists believe in applying the letter of the law, and the essentialists believe in the spirit of the law.

And in terms of the spirit of the law, I didn't do anything wrong. I followed the spirit of the law. The spirit of the law is to get you to move your car so that people can use that spot and you don't just like, hog it. I did that. The letter of the law says 35ft, but it's random and arbitrary.

It could be 34ft or 36ft or 40ft, 25ft. It doesn't really matter. It's just like, this literal nonsense, and the essentialists are right and the legalists are wrong, and you are aligning with the legalists I should suddenly like. Well, that's very interesting. Thank you for enlightening me.

Aviva de Kornfeld

Did you think that would work? I always think that people can be persuaded of something that makes sense, but. If I'm a judge and some guy starts talking to me about the nuances in chinese philosophy, I feel like I'd be like, I'm gonna double that guy's fine. Well, she didn't double it, but she certainly didn't, you know, cancel it. You still had to pay.

Ira Glass

Yeah. Yeah, I paid.

Aviva de Kornfeld

This all happened years ago. It turns out the fine kave had to pay was smaller than he remembers, and the number of feet for parking was larger. But the spirit of the story remains the same. Anyway, Kave finally gets an apartment of his own and a parking permit for his car so he doesn't have to move it every 2 hours anymore. But it's still hard to find a place to park.

And sometimes you are just circling the street for half an hour or an hour, and it's late at night, and you can't find a spot, and you're tired, you. And you're angry and you're hungry, and you're just like, ugh. And so sometimes you're just desperate. So you'll park somewhere that's kind of, like, borderline illegal. So I did that.

I couldn't take it anymore, so I just parked near the corner curb, which you're not supposed to, and, you know, but it was barely touching it, you know, just barely. And the next morning, I go to my car, and, you know, I have a ticket, and I decided to contest it. Why? You actually did something wrong this time. I know, but it was so much money, and it was so close.

I don't know. I just. I contested it. What were you imagining your argument would be? Because you can't do the spirit of the law, letter of the law thing in this case.

Gersh Kuntzman

I know. I don't know what I was thinking. I thought maybe. I don't know. It makes no sense, but I contested it.

And I go to the same court, I wait around for a long time, and I get the same judge, and she says to me, I remember you. You're the guy who talked to me about the difference between legalism and essentialism in chinese philosophy. And I said, yeah, you remember that? She's like, I do. She's like, I thought about that a lot.

And she said, and thinking about it, I think you were right. I think the spirit of the law is more important than the letter of the law. And I regretted giving you that ticket. And even though you are clearly guilty in this case, I am not going to make you pay for this ticket because I made you pay for one that you werent guilty for. So she cancelled it.

Thats unbelievable that a person could be persuaded by another person. Kind of like, how often do people change their minds? Almost never. Yeah, thats true. Thats sad.

Aviva de Kornfeld

What was your reaction? Well, I was delighted and I don't know, I felt like, you know, the world seemed so inhuman and so bureaucratic, and it just seemed like the human had prevailed for once.

Seriously, all across the world, on any given day, how many people actually take the time to listen to what a complete stranger has to say, consider it, change their mind and then admit to it? Hardly ever. And the fact that this doesn't happen more often, that's a crime and not a minor one.

Gersh Kuntzman

I've eveted a Kornfeld Kaveh Zahedi told this story on his podcast, 365 things I want to tell you before we both die.

Act three jewel intentions. So sometimes small crimes can be hard to solve because they are so small. This next story is about a scheme that had been going on for a very long time, right under everybody's noses. It was brazen, but nobody could figure out who was behind it. Michaela Bly told the story of what happened on stage at the moth in.

Micaela Blei

The elementary school where I teach. There are Legos that are very valuable and Legos no one gives a shit about.

The ones you don't really care about are the ones there are thousands of the gray two by fours, the black two by fours, anything that's red. For some reason, all we have are red legos. And the ones that are valuable are the things that you can't really find. So there's a second grade, a third grade and a fourth grade. Everyone's got bins.

And in these bins, the things you very rarely see are anything lime green. I think once upon a time we had a set that was lime green. Anything that has a picture on it, it's kind of magical. And then these jewels, they're these little plastic, clear colored legos, and they really look valuable. I mean, I'm kind of psyched about them, too.

And every class has, especially my class has what I like to call the black hole boys. They are the boys who sit anytime there's choice time and put together legos and discuss theories of outer space and infinity they build spaceships and they're like, well, but okay, but could there be a black hole that would be strong enough to pull other black holes in? And they all sort of think about that for a while. And they're my boys. I like them.

I'm really into them. And most of playing legos anywhere in my school is really mostly just pawing through, looking for the valuable ones. I mean, of course you could build with them, but that's not the fun part. The fun part is I found this orange jewel or whatever, so that's always a big deal. And all the bins are outside underneath the cubbies.

So every class has their bins, you know, near their classes, cubbies. The second I teach third grade, the second graders come to me one day and they say, we need your help. We think someone's been stealing our jewels. Now they have to dismantle all their legos at the end of every week so that it's really fair, so you have a chance to paw through and find the jewels anew every Monday. And they have been noticing that over the course of several weeks, they find fewer and fewer jewels and they suspect my class.

And I say, you know what? That's not really fair. I'm sure that it is not my guys who are doing that. And they say, well, we think you should look, look through their bins at their spaceships and find out if they've got our jewels. And I said, you know what?

That's not what we're going to do. We're going to trust them. We're going to ask them, did you take those jewels? And if they say no, we're going to believe them. Because secretly I'm thinking, a, there's no way my boys did it, and b, I don't really want to get in the middle of that if that's what's going on.

Ira Glass

So.

Micaela Blei

We ask my boys, and the sort of ringleader, the head of the black hole boys, Edward, is this very smart, very sour kid whose spaceships are amazing. I mean, they look like they could really go. And he says, no, we have not. Have you tried the fourth grade? Because those guys think they're so big.

And so me and these three little second graders go to the fourth grade, and we say to some of the fourth graders who are playing with legos, did you guys take these jewels? And the fourth graders say, no. And then later, privately, they say, you know, are you sure the second graders are telling the truth because they think they're so cute?

There begins to have, there's a culture of fear developing across all three grades. No one trusts each other. Everyone's sort of looking at each other's things that they're building, and the teachers are picking up on it, too. I'm sort of watching everyone's spaceships, being like, I don't remember that orange one and that green one and the blue one in the second grade of two a. That's not.

I don't know if that's right. And I'm sort of getting. I'm sort of getting there, too, but we're all kind of watching each other. And then I am getting homework. Edward does his homework and does more homework than he needs to, but he always forgets to hand it in.

And so I just randomly, you know, I go into his cubby just to grab the math homework that I know is in there. Under the math homework is a jewel encrusted spaceship, dazzling.

The wings have wings, and those wings have other things. And there's a glass window that I've literally never seen before. In the six years that I've been teaching there, I've never seen this glass window. It's beautiful. But I'm stuck with a dilemma.

What do I do with this? If I accuse him, then, number one, the second graders are kind of intense, and I'm a little worried about what they would do.

Number two, I already told the second graders it couldn't have possibly been my boys. This is my reputation on the line as well. I don't want it to have been him. I could, it occurs to me, just say, steal it back. I could just take it.

Because if he tried to say, someone stole my jewel encrusted spaceship, that would be on him. That would be his, you know, that's a dilemma he would have. But then I realized that could possibly be framing another kid. And I do have. I have my line I will not cross.

So I'm not gonna frame a kid. So instead, I wait for a Friday when we should be taking apart our things, and he has not been taking apart the spaceship. And I wait till Friday. I get him alone, and I say to him really casually, so don't forget to take apart your spaceship. And he looks at me, and he knows I know.

And he says something really ballsy. He goes, I did.

I already did.

I sit down with him, I open the cubby, I show him the spaceship, and I say, this is an amazing spaceship.

You did a really great job. But. You gotta let it go. And we cut a deal. And over the course of several weeks, we dismantle the spaceship very, very slowly.

I can't just smash it. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna just take the whole thing apart and I start secretly putting those jewels back in other people's cubbies for him so that he can still be the head of the black hole boys and not lose that reputation that he has, that he loves and so that I don't have to, you know, go back on my word that my boys didn't do anything. I was an accessory to a third grade crime. There's no way around that.

Ira Glass

That's it. Thank you.

Gersh Kuntzman

Michaela Bly lives in Portland, Maine.

Act four. Occam's toilet. Okay, so earlier in our show, we had a mom who invented an entire courtroom to teach her kids some lessons and some values. In this act, we have parents doing something so much simpler. They're simply trying to level with their kids and reason with them together.

And in this case, they recorded what happened. We've actually changed everybody's names. At the kids request, Bethel Hopte tells the story. Todd and Amy live in a house in New Jersey. It's an old house, and one day, they notice they've got a plumbing problem.

Aviva de Kornfeld

There's liquid pooling in this hole in their basement floor, around a sewage pipe they call a plumber, who snakes the drain and charges them dollar 500. And then a few weeks later, the liquid reappears. A second plumber comes in. He can't find any other problems with their sewage system. His professional opinion is that there isn't anything wrong with their sewage system.

He thinks what's going on is much simpler. The liquid in the hole is actually pee. Someone in their house is peeing in the hole. Quick warning I have to make because we're on the radio. Peeing comes up a bunch of times in the story.

Nothing gross, but just so you know, what the plumber suggested seemed entirely possible. Amy and Todd have three boys, eight year old twins, Ryan and Lawrence, and their younger brother, Hugh. Hes six. And so they gather the kids together to find out who peed in the hole. Amy, their mom, records a video of the meeting on her phone.

Ira Glass

We had the plumber. Come again? Two times in rough. Just over three weeks, there's been, like, urine backed up in the basement. Like, pee.

Aviva de Kornfeld

Now, that's Ryan, twin number one. They're all sitting on a navy blue sectional. Todd keeps calmly laying out the facts. Yes, they think there's pee on the basement floor. Yeah, like in that little recess in that little, like, hole in the floor.

Ira Glass

Who's peeing in the hole in the floor. Not me. The one who just said, not me. That's Hugh, the little one. Lawrence, twin number two, hasn't said anything yet.

Aviva de Kornfeld

He's quiet with a blank expression on his face. Then Ryan asks a question. Can I just say something? Yes. Whenever we see peace in the work, he always does it in the basement.

He wants to know if it's possible that the dog did it. So it is entirely possible. My question to any of you is, have any of you ever gone and just peed in that hole in the basement? Whoa. That's disgusting.

Ira Glass

Ew. Swear? Yes. Yes, I swear. I promise.

Aviva de Kornfeld

Because here's the thing. I promise. There. That's Lawrence, the quiet twin. He breaks his silence.

So now all three children have denied peeing in the hole. Their dad tries to explain to the kids, someone peeing in the hole is actually the best, best possible scenario. It would not be good, and I would not be happy. But it would be preferable that if someone is doing this, that you're honest. Because the other explanation is that we have a bad sewage problem that no one can explain.

Ira Glass

So it's actually better if someone just says, yes, it was me. It was an accident. I did it twice. Because then at least we are not crazy and we don't have to have a plumber. Come again?

Micaela Blei

Cause we already spent a lot of money trying to figure out what's going on. What's going on here? It was me. It was me. Brian says, what are you doing?

Aviva de Kornfeld

But then it turns out he was just trying to get the interrogation over with. I didn't pee in there. But can I just say that? No. That doesn't help if you're lying.

Micaela Blei

We just want you guys to be honest. Okay, just tell us. I'm being honest. I am.

No, we're not. Okay, let's go. One by one, they ask every child again, starting with twin number one. Ryan, have you peed? Honestly?

Ira Glass

Did you? Have you ever in that space? Okay, here's another question we're talking about now. There was a. There was this.

This weekend and three weeks ago. I never pee it. Okay, did you see anybody of your brothers do it? I never saw anybody peeing. Okay, next.

Aviva de Kornfeld

Next. Hugh, the youngest, he's been fidgeting with a rainbow bookmark, fanning himself with it. It was not me. No. Did not see anybody do it?

Ira Glass

No. And you didn't do it? Yes. You swear? Yes.

Aviva de Kornfeld

Finally, Lawrence, twin number two. He answers the question with the directness of a politician caught up in a scandal. I did not pee in the hole. Okay.

Ira Glass

Okay. The next thing we're gonna have is we're gonna go down to the police department. Cause they have a lie detector test. Okay, everyone's good. The twins, Ryan and Lawrence, are in, but Hugh, the little one, lets out a nervous giggle.

Micaela Blei

So before we go to the police department, can anyone just tell the truth? Time. Hugh shoots his hand in the air. His eyes are wide, and he's smiling. Yeah.

Did you do.

Ira Glass

Yes, I swear. Are you telling me. Yes, I'm actually. Yes, I did. I did.

Micaela Blei

How many times? Once. That's only times. How many times? Only once.

Ira Glass

Because somebody. It had to have twice. It had to have happened more than one time. Okay, then I probably did it, like, three times. Oh, why?

I don't know. Cause I need to go so bad. And once in one time, I need to go so bad. Cause I was, like, so far away from the bathroom, and I couldn't. Listeners, there is a bathroom in the basement.

Aviva de Kornfeld

There are 25 steps that separate the bathroom from the play area. Maybe a few more if your legs are short. You. How many times did you do it again? You peed down that hole three times in the basement.

Ira Glass

Are you crying? Oh, God. You were taking $500 out of your bank account. Well, I don't even have any. Then you're gonna have zero money.

Micaela Blei

Just forget it. Okay? Case closed. Court adjourned.

Aviva de Kornfeld

Hugh's mom told me the point of this whole thing was, yes, to solve the crime, but also to bring these kids into the adult world for just a moment, see the situation the way they do. But she knows it was probably too much to ask. Kids live in their own world. It's a world without plumbers who charge $500. It's a world where a hole in the ground looks like a perfectly good place to pee.

Gersh Kuntzman

Bethel Hopday is an editor at our show.

Ira Glass

A friend I know was back into work. He noticed something really untoward ahead as horror. Total jerk who had done something totally absurd. A piece of tape had covered his plate. He turned a letter B to an e.

My friend. He couldn't abdicate. No, he couldn't let that scalp blow go free. But the cops call it criminal mischief. They simply do not want to hear the cops call it criminal mischief.

Their motives are so clear. Today's program is produced by Aviva de Koenfeld. The people who put together today's show include bin Maddowunmi, Fiya Benin, Jindai Ban, Zoe Chase, Sean Cole, Michael Kamate, Hannah Jaffe, Walt Rudy Lee, Kathryn Ray Mondo, Nadia Raymond Safiya Riddle, Ryan Rumery, Francis Swanson, Christopher Sotalamat Tierney, Julie Whitaker and Diane Wu. Our managing editors Sara Abdur Rahman. Our senior editor is David Kessnabaum.

Gersh Kuntzman

Our executive editor is Emmanuel Berry. Special thanks today to Kate Emerich, Penelope SS Wong, Jackie Reese, Noah Leonard, Alexi Horowitz, Ghazi, Jamika Brown and Kathleen Conte. Our website, thisamericanlife.org comma, where you can stream our archive of over 800 episodes for absolutely free. Also, there's videos, there's lists of favorite shows. If you're looking for something to listen to.

Lots of other stuff there. Anyway, thisamericanlife.org dot this american life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio exchange. Thanks as always, Joe. Program's co founder, Mister Tori Mahoutia. You know, he went on trial this week for stealing 15 pairs of shoes.

His defense, I gotta say, was not the strongest. I don't even know what 30ft looks like. I'm Ronald Glass. Back next week with more stories of this american life. Cause the cops call it criminal mischief.

Ira Glass

It's the public failed to fang. It's the pumpkin fail to fang. All right, guys, take us home. God skeleton and on this chip, those cops Skeleton and Om when it comes to teaching kids and teens about money, practice makes perfect. That's where Greenlight comes in.

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828: Minor Crimes Division

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Episode Summary

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Episode Chapters

1. License Plate Vigilante

2. Harriet Court

3. The Spirit of the Law

4. The Basement Mystery

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