Will & Amala Go on a Police Ride-Along | Will & Amala

Every ride-along that I've ever taken has changed their mind. Stop right there! This is what you guys do is bring in people here to cry? Hi everybody, it's Amala Fanova here. We are here with Will Whitty. We are heading to a police station actually. Yeah, finally Amala got caught for murder so we're taking her in. Bringing her in. Actually what we're doing guys is we're going on a police ride-along to give you an inside scoop of what it means to be a police officer, how they're functioning in today's current world, especially with the whole defund the police narrative that we're hearing on the left. We arrived in South Central LA in the early evening. Before going out on patrol with the officers, we got a tour of the LAPD Southeast Station where we sat in on a roll call, spoke with a gangs unit homicide detective, and went through a police training simulator. Everyone knows that police are really afraid to go out there and do proactive police work. You know, you really have to think about, do I want to get involved in something that is going to put myself, my family, my career at risk, you know, potentially cause me to go to jail? That's significant. But the other problem is, of course, the bad guys all know this. There's no rules out there. They can get away with it. The police are afraid. No, you know, you're not going to get stopped. And it just kind of creates this environment of anything goes. But what the result really is, is the effect on the communities that we police. That's who feels it. Politicians and the media creating a narrative that is completely false. We don't kill a lot of unarmed black people. We don't target black people. We target gang members who happen to be black. But we do the same for all gangs. And when you don't tell the truth, people who don't know this area assume that that is the truth. And they all jump on this bandwagon. And like Eric said, really good people are getting hurt. We're losing kids. Two, four, seven. It's not good. That's my ex-girlfriend. 90% of scenarios we'll run through here is all communication. We want to see, can these guys talk? Can these guys not talk? And if they can't, then that gives us the opportunity to start training them. Yeah, teach them. You got to have a vest. You'll have a taser, OC, and a gun. So all you got to worry about is three weapons. Or four. One is your mouth and your hands. So if you have a scenario, we can just talk somebody to jail. Great. Sir, drop the weapon. Drop the weapon. You should not be doing this. Hey, sir, sir. You got your handcuffs? So what we expect in that scenario is, we expect the officer to transition to the holster of the weapon, go hands-on, deliver a kick to create distance, deploy the taser, OC, any of that stuff. Well, Will started this vlog a free man, and now he's in prison for life. This makes me nervous. You respond to a robbery in progress, and you identify a suspect. Okay. Most robbery suspects have guns. Right. So right off the bat, what are you going to have? I would already have my gun out. Where would you be standing? I would be standing with cover. Perfect. Keywords. Okay. Sir, stop running. Sir, stop right there. Put your hands on the ground slowly. If I'm going to rob a suspect, not only am I looking for the guy coming out of the bank, I got to look what's one of my passing. If I'm passing a car and there's somebody in it, I got to hit the brakes, because that might be his getaway car. Right. So if you're going to go into that scenario, you got to know what you're going into. After nightfall, officers Coughlin and Robinson took us out on patrol in the Watts neighborhood of South Central, one of LA's most dangerous areas. We had a murder two weeks ago in front of a dozen kids under the age of eight. And when we got to the scene, there were book bags, bikes, sneakers, all spread across. And then we saw the video and the kids were just running. And there was no parents grabbing them. Not one parent jumped in front of a kid. It's crazy. All right, guys, we're in Watts right now. Bounty hunter Bloods controlled this part of the city. Bullet holes here, here, here. Like, these are all over the place, which means that the guy who's doing this was just spraying and praying, which is how you hit kids, how you have collateral damage. So that's kind of what we're dealing with here. It's an incredibly sad situation seeing all of this. The gang members that control this territory here do not actually live here. They've actually just come into this residential area and overtaken the space here. You can hear the music. You'll see a lot of gang members have some sort of red paraphernalia on them, whether that's a shirt, whether that's a hat, a bandana, whatever. But that's to show that they are a member of the bounty hunter Bloods. It's something that I've never experienced before like this. Definitely not like this in Watts. It's a whole different world, honestly, a whole separate world. So you know most of these people? More bad than good because we worked gangs for so long. But it's really not fair, the narrative. It's not targeting us that gets people down. It's handcuffing us. With thick skin, we can have the community gangs hate us. We can have the politicians hate us. But when you strip us of our resources and we can't do anything, that's really depressing for coming to work and not being able to help people that really want help. The officers morale? Well, I mean, I'd say department wide, it's probably a little strained right now because of the whole defund the police movement. But particularly our unit where we get to engage, interact with the community, we obviously get a big strong understanding of the narrative that's not really true because the community that we work with love us. Just our mere presence deters crime. Just our mere presence will make the bad guy think twice about doing a drive by or robbing someone if we're out here visibly in our black and white engaging with the community that deters crime. 70% Latinos and 30% African American. But because the gangs control the street and that gang is African Americans, you won't see Latinos outside because of the fear of the gang. So it's a gang war and a race war all on top of each other in the same place. Correct. Officer Coughlin went on to explain that due to racial tensions in the neighborhood, most Hispanic people would rather call in sick to work than ask a gang member to move a car that is blocking them from leaving their home. So this is the wall thing. These are the names of who? These are the names of people that have been killed in this project. 300 names all together I guess? Right. There's names everywhere. Now one person has come here on arrival on left and said, yeah, that's pretty much what I thought. People leave in tears. I can feel it. It's like a pressure that you feel like you could just cry at any moment watching this stuff. I've talked to many of my friends that have no clue what takes place when we're doing our job. And frankly, after maybe a 15-20 minute conversation like I'm having with you right now, minds are changed. I have yet to come across a cop that I hear typically described in the media. What I see are people out here being the only people that are trying to keep people safe and trying to engage in the community and try to help uplift the quality of life. And if you want some help, there's lots of people down here in blue that are more than happy to help you and more than happy to help you get engaged and more than happy to protect you while you're here. And as you've seen so far, who are the people that are out here trying to engage with the community and try to make things better? It's not the people that live here. It's us for the most part. And sadly, that story just isn't going to play. We saw firsthand the good the police are doing in the community when the officers took us to the home of an incredible young girl from the neighborhood. What is your story? How did you get the ability to do this? I started when I was six. I told my dad, Dad, take me to the gym. And at first he was like, no, it's not going to happen because boxing is a tough sport. But then I was like, no, take me. So he took me. And then the first week, it was kind of hard, but I managed to get through it. She's being modest. Apparently, she's the best boxer in the country for her age. I want to go to the Olympics 2024 in France and 2028 in L.A. Wow. And I'm actually training for the Junior Olympics. Would it hurt if you punched me in the head? So Marilyn, what has it been like growing up here? For me, it's been actually like a bit tough just because sometimes like, I mean, we're all growing and we want to hang outside and everything, but we really can't because there's bad influence and everything and we have to be safe. At night, when we sleep, we hear gunshots. You hear them and it's like, OK, you know? That's just my life. Yeah. Show us some of your art. I don't have art right now, but I have writing. I don't know if you guys want to hear my writing. We tend to forget the messages of our ancestors and prize the ideal present society holds because we believe we are superior. However, when you hold the experiences, the past held and the ideals of modern society, dreams can start to rise. Ghosts can start to rattle and voices can start to emerge from silent corners. With the support of these officers, Marilyn attends a prestigious out-of-state boarding school. She is just one example among many wherein the police mentorship programs, like STRIVE, offer families a path toward hope. Two chicken with that as well. Two chicken and one with that? Yeah. Geez, Amala, you hungry or something? I am. I'm just using food to make up for the fact that I just like cried for like 20 minutes. All right, guys. Well, what an amazing, terrific day. Things that I never thought I'd experience coming out here and all the expectations that we had at the beginning when we were talking about in our intro just blown out of the water. Totally. That seems to be the case with every single vlog that we do. We go in with these expectations and they just go out the window. Drop a like if you support the boys in blue and we are going to see you in our next vlog. Remember how grateful you should be to be alive and have the life that you have because if anything, this vlog shows that. If nothing else.