- What's up, BPD? You're under a-roast!
[applause]
Yeah.
Next I want to attempt my most dangerous roast ever,
roasting an audience of armed policemen.
[laughter]
I've been following these issues for a long time.
In fact, I call my penis Rodney King
'cause I beat it so much.
Yeah.
And just like the LAPD,
I always get off.
[laughter]
What about body cameras?
You guys don't wear body cameras yet, huh?
Would you want those, Izzy? Would you want a body camera?
- No. - No?
Dunkin' Donuts calls 'em free advertising.
- They can pay for them then.
- They should pay for them. That would be a great deal.
I have a theory, cops. I have a theory.
Let's just get it out in the open
between cops and donuts.
Just once and for all.
I have a theory why cops love donuts so much.
'Cause they look like they've been shot.
[laughter]
This is for real. My safety's off tonight.
[indistinct police chatter over radio]
♪ ♪
[siren wails]
Hi, my name is Jeff Ross.
They call me The Roastmaster General.
I have the best job in the world.
I make fun of people for a living,
and I think the reason I can get away
with roasting my way through life
is because it comes from a place of love.
I love everybody,
even the one group of people
that nobody seems to love right now--cops.
- I say, but I'm sick and tired
of them killing our babies.
- So when an anti-police brutality rally
showed up right outside my front door,
I got hit with a big question.
- Which side are you on? all: Which side are you on?
- Which side are you on?
We are here today to draw a line throughout society.
Stop police terror.
Which side are you on?
- No racists! all: No peace.
- No racists!
all: No peace.
- Give a holler out for your loved one right now.
[cheering]
- When you see a cop,
do you feel safe or do you not feel safe?
- Oh, no.
When I see a cop, I check to see
if there are people around who could witness
that I didn't do anything wrong so that I got somebody
who'll back my story up in case this becomes
an unprovoked assault by this cop.
That's what I look for.
- That's a scary way to live your life.
- No, it is a scary way to live your life,
but it is real.
- We've had people shot with their hands up,
we've had people shot giving up,
we've had people shot running away.
- Running away.
- We don't know what to do anymore,
and so now it's time to fight back,
and that's what we've determined.
- If the police were watching this,
what would you say to them?
- We are not haters of you.
We are lovers of humanity.
We are haters of what you've been trained to do.
- Can I ask you why you're here and stuff?
- Yeah, man.
I'm here for people like him that have been killed
and been murdered,
and I'm here 'cause I'm a human being and I got a conscience
and if I'm watching it, then--
and I think it's murder and I know it's murder,
then to not say something
is making me culpable in murder.
- That's some sign, dude.
- Huh? You mean it.
- Yeah.
- You got a gun?
You must.
- No, I'm good.
- Oh.
- Why don't you think people trust the cops?
- Who trust a cop? Only white people trust cops,
and y'all don't even trust them that much no damn more.
Shit.
They'll kill y'all too,
at the drop of a damn hat.
But you know, you white and you privileged,
so of course you trust 'em.
They ain't hit you upside the head
and put you in jail.
I was nine years old during the 1967 riots.
White national guard pointed bayoneted rifles
at me and my baby brother and sister's head.
I was nine. - Wow.
- And told us,
"You little nappy-headed niggers
"get your asses back in that house
before I blow your heads off."
- Wow.
- We're not gonna go through that again.
- Right. - Can I cuss on Comedy Central?
- Of course, I do it all the time.
- [bleep] the shit out of that.
I want somebody hurt. [laughs]
- Wow.
Violence is never the answer,
so I tried to diffuse the situation by copping a feel.
Can I have a hug?
- Sure.
- Thank you for that.
- I mean, do you believe
that black people are equal to white people?
- Of course.
- Well, then you're my brother.
- Course.
- And I love you and I want the best for you.
- But I think Mexicans are better than all of us.
- That's a joke. You're a damn comedian.
[laughs]
all: I can't breathe! I can't breathe!
- Did you lose somebody?
- That one girl,
a seven-year-old Aiyana Jones from Detroit.
- How did a little girl get shot?
- They came in the wrong house.
Raided the wrong house.
But my anger keeps me going.
- Wow.
- My anger.
- If you were gonna say something
to the cops or the police, what would you say?
- I don't like y'all, I don't appreciate y'all.
Weed the bad cops out,
'cause y'all say it's good cops.
No, 'cause y'all stick up for each other.
It's blue against every other color.
[all yelling]
- Pushed it on me!
Yes, she did!
- It gives you a stomach ache to see all this agony.
It's more heightened
because the families of the victims are here,
and it's like a big funeral.
It's like a big angry funeral.
When I go and do my show for the cops,
what should I tell them?
- Learn how to respect human life.
- These half-Negroes!
We have to send them out!
Do not try us!
You look at these half Negros.
You're a [bleep] half Negro.
Shame on you!
[indistinct] shame on you!
- This is intense and weird and...
disturbing.
- FTP! all: [bleep] the police!
- You ain't getting away. You're not getting away.
You're under arrest.
Put your hands behind your back.
all: Let him go! Let him go!
- This is scary.
I'm gonna move away from here.
What the hell is going on
between the cops and our communities?
This is a national emergency.
People are dying on both sides,
and nobody is talking to one another.
We keep seeing these images.
Freddie Gray,
Michael Brown--
- I can't breathe! I can't breathe!
- Eric Garner.
Alton Sterling. [gunshots]
I can say these names all day
because there's so many.
And then random cops getting ambushed for revenge.
This is insane.
It's practically a civil war.
all: I can't breathe!
- The message of the protesters
is loud and clear and chilling.
So I started wondering,
what do cops think about all of this?
What's their job really like right now?
And if I make fun of them,
will they laugh or will they kill me?
So I put it out there
that I wanted to roast a big city police department
and the only one to step up and say yes
was the home of America's very first police force,
Bah-ston,
a city that I've loved since going to college there,
but on the morning I arrived,
an officer was shot and tensions were running high.
- You know, this individual just shot one of our officers
and the officers were able to tackle him
and not use deadly force.
- I don't know the details of what happened in Dorchester
but cop gets shot, they could have--
they could have killed the guy.
His partner could have killed the guy.
- You know, the officers ran him down and tackled him
when they could have used deadly force.
I like to say, uh, you know,
we're a compassionate department
and we care about human life
and I think the public realizes that.
- Boston used to have a bad reputation.
- Well, when I came on the job we had 160 homicides.
We had 38 this year.
Chicago had 500, Baltimore had 344,
so the stricter gun laws and the community work we're doing
is really making a difference.
- Why would you let me come in
and roast the Boston Police Department?
- Well, I would because, you know,
I want to break the stereotype out there that,
you know, we're the bad guys.
- Right.
- I want people to see that what's playing out
across the nation
isn't what the Boston Police are.
We don't mind you making fun of us,
because I want the public to know we're real people.
[sniffs] - You got a nose for crime.
- I know.
- And ears for it too.
[laughter]
Now that the brass was on board,
I was revved up and ready
to address the rank and file
during an afternoon roll call
and give 'em a few laughs before they hit the streets.
[whistling melody]
How are you, everybody?
I'll make this quick 'cause I know most of you
are double-parked.
Thank you for letting me come here.
This is really cool.
I've never performed in front
of an entire roomful of YouTube celebrities before.
This'll be so much better if you guys just came
into the middle of the [bleep] room.
All right, fine.
You guys also have a rich criminal history in this town.
You had the Boston Tea Party here,
Whitey Bulger was from here,
Tom Brady's from here.
[police grumble]
Oh, come on, that one
really let the air out of the room, huh?
And let's be real,
if Whitey Bulger's name had been Blackie Bulger
they would have caught him a lot quicker.
Jesus Christ.
There's obviously a problem
between the cops and the community
across the country right now and that's what I'm here,
because that really bothers me,
and it really bothers me
when some people say that all cops are racist.
Of course that's not true.
Most of you are just dicks to everybody.
All right.
[chuckles]
All right, well...
Thanks for coming.
All right.
Thanks you guys.
Holy shit, that sucked.
Hasn't there been enough bombing in Boston?
Well, it turns out that right before I got to town,
the policemen's union found a picture of me
at that Black Lives Matter rally
and profiled me as a cop-hater.
They even posted a bulletin in all the precincts
and sent an email to every cop in town
telling them to stay away from me.
With no cameras allowed, I spent hours
negotiating my comedy special out of a hostage situation.
When I promised to come back at a later date
and perform at a police benefit,
the union finally let me squeeze into a vest
for a ride along
with dos policas que se llaman Jose y Izzy.
You're like Cheech and Chong over here.
[laughter]
Did you see that roast I did up there?
That was terrible.
- So they see a picture of you
being part of an anti-police brutality rally
and, uh, based on the company that was at that rally,
you were painted with that same brush.
- I didn't realize people thought I was anti-cop.
- Part of a cop's makeup is to be cynical.
- Right.
- You know, and it's gonna take a while
before we kind of feel you out and it's like,
"Okay, you're our friend? You're our friend."
If you're a foe, we're gonna treat you like a foe.
And one of the reasons being is that almost 100% of the time,
we're dealing with unpleasant people.
[siren whoops]
- What? [bleep] Boston.
This small-ass town.
I'm telling you that you got to get the guns off the street.
You think it's funny?
This ain't funny.
They kill kids.
- You asked me, right, do we get roasted sometimes?
Sometimes, you know, this is what we get.
[laughter]
I mean, clearly this is a guy that's out here.
He's had a little too much to drink.
Locking him up's not gonna solve the problem,
so how about maybe trying to find him some sort
of social services?
- You hungry? It's a muffin. I didn't eat it.
- All right. My man. You have a good one.
All right, boss? Be good.
- You're probably the only guy
that guy talked to the whole day.
- Yeah, he's still talking to me now.
[laughter]
He doesn't know we're gone. - Right.
You got--you got to laugh at this shit or else you cry.
That poor guy. - Yeah.
So are you guys good cops or bad cops?
- [chuckles]
- Nobody hates a crooked cop more than the rest of the cops.
- What about people who say the cops--even good cops
cover up for crooked cops?
What do you say to that?
- I mean, I'm sure there was a time and a place
where that may have happened and it may still happen.
We absolutely police ourselves
and try and keep each other in line and--
- It's like a family member.
- Absolutely.
- We do look out for each other.
We may not--we may not snitch you out,
we may not point you out,
but no one's gonna cover it up.
When it comes down to it,
we're not going to let a bad apple ruin it
for the rest of us.
- Right.
♪ ♪
See, now you're scaring me,
'cause you're sneaking up on somebody.
- Well, this is an area where people like
to pick up prostitutes and come in
and hang out in their cars and stuff, so...
- Are we on break right now?
[laughter]
- You zip up?
- Why are you [bleep]-blocking this guy, Izzy?
- Well, I mean, there's a school right there.
- What's going on, boss?
You good? Yeah?
I'm just making sure you ain't hanging out here.
You can go ahead, drive around.
Yeah. Enjoy your night.
- Oh, poor Ben Affleck.
[laughter]
- You never know.
- Mother doesn't have child care,
so she needs police services.
She's got to come down to file a report
for domestic abuse that she's experiencing.
They should be home.
They should be warm in their beds.
I only got two coloring books.
Y'all gonna have to share. You guys gonna share?
Y'all are brothers and sisters, right?
You know, maybe put on a sticker
and pretend you're police officers for the day.
The kids are now witnessing Mommy and Daddy fighting
and, you know, what goes on and what Mommy's going to say
to the police.
- Almost.
You're a good guy, Izzy.
- We're all good guys
and we all try as best we can.
We're all better at some things than others but, uh,
everybody's heart's in the right place here.
- Whoa. Nice catch. - There we go. Good catch.
- How do I get the cops to trust me more?
- Buy 'em lunch. - [laughs]
- The way to a cop's heart is through his stomach.
- Yeah. - Really?
- We love to eat.
- Good morning.
You guys want pizza?
What's up?
Want some pizza? Dig in.
Hi. How you doing? - Good, how are you?
- I'm Jeff. - Jessica.
- Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you.
Thanks for the pizza. - All right. Of course.
Look at this.
You heard of the thin blue line?
This is the chubby blue line right here.
- Wow. - How you doing, man?
- Good, good.
- You're like Tom Cruise missing a chromosome.
[laughter]
Six cops staring at me.
Now I know what it feels like to be a black kid
walking home from school.
[cops murmur]
Oh, come on, you guys can handle it.
It's hard roasting cops.
[laughter]
- I'm Jeff. - Jeff.
- Nice to meet you. - Dave McBenamine, pleasure.
- How long you been a police officer?
- Uh, started the academy three years ago,
so two and a half years?
- And where were you before that, Hogwarts?
[laughter]
- Family trouble. Her daughter has a pocket knife.
She's requesting EMS as well.
- That your mom here to pick you up?
[laughter]
You're like the perfect-looking cop.
- Oh, thank you.
- Perfect beard. - I try.
- I want to [bleep] you so bad right now.
[laughter]
What's up, Izzy? How you doing?
Good to see you, buddy. Jose, how you doing, man?
It's great.
Between the two of them, they have 30 kids.
[laughter]
I love Boston so much.
I was walking around today in the Boston Common.
I saw, um, a guy masturbating.
[laughter]
Took me almost an hour to find one,
but he's here tonight.
Give it up for him.
Come on.
[applause]
If this was a Batman movie,
you guys would die in the first scene.
[laughter]
Let's just go hassle some black dudes.
What are we doing? Come on.
- What the [bleep]?
- We're gonna do that right now, in about five minutes.
- When you're out together,
does the white cop/black cop dynamic come into play
on how you deal with certain things?
- It's fine. - These racially-charged times.
- No, well, the black people don't talk to me.
They'd rather talk to him.
- Well, they know--
well, if we go to certain areas,
he'll have a tougher time if it's a racially charged point
because they'll look at him and say,
"Why--why are you on his side? Why you on their side?"
- I should be--I say, "I'm not on anybody's side.
I'm on the side of the law."
If someone says "black male wearing black jeans,
a black hoodie," or whatever, you know,
it's a suspect in a robbery and you were walk--
drive down the street and that's what you see,
of course you got to stop and talk to them.
And I mean, that's just what it is.
That's just like the incident in Baltimore.
I don't know what happened when that guy got put in the van
or whatever.
But Freddie Gray, just by his criminal record,
was a criminal.
And he was running from the police for a reason.
- They were charged with basically putting him
in the back to purposely kill him.
- Kill him, exactly. - Which is--
- So is that imaginable to you guys?
- No. - No.
- Well, you're not in that police force.
That police force might have more bad apples than most.
- No, I don't look at it that way,
because if they're in a tough city
and that was his game,
when he got arrested, he made a huge scene,
and he had prior neck injuries,
so who knows what happened, you know?
But on the other hand--
- Maybe it's happened to him before.
- If it--if he died as a result of the ride,
it wasn't their intention.
They were charged with murder, as like, common criminals,
and they got dressed and came to work
to kill him in the van?
No, but that's what they got charged at, and it's insane.
- We only--we're human like everyone else.
Everyone thinks we're not-- you know, we make mistakes.
But we have seconds to make a decision,
and then everyone else has days,
weeks, months and years to criticize it,
nitpick it, to second-guess it, everything.
- You don't think that's possible
that these cops hated this guy
so much for whatever history they had?
- No, to kill him? No.
- But-- both: No.
- So it's inconceivable that they wanted to rough him up?
- Roughing up or killing?
We're talking about two different things.
- I see.
You know, I saw this protest in New York.
- Yeah.
- And people are so upset
and do you think they have a point, Commissioner?
- You know, the Eric Garner case,
I don't really know the particulars.
You know, Chicago troubles me.
- Yeah, Chicago.
- Yeah.
- Budgets are so low they can't even afford
to fire a single warning shot anymore.
- [laughs]
You know, there's 18,000 police departments
all along the country
and there's so many good policemen
that I think it's unfair that we're all getting painted
with the same brush.
Our job now is to work harder
and reassure them that we're not bad guys out there.
We're only human.
- A lot of cops cover up for each other.
I mean, I met cadets today.
They're just out of the academy.
They grew up together.
- Right. - So you know,
you hear about good cops covering up for bad cops.
- Yeah, I think that's changed now.
I really do.
I think with the amount of cameras out there,
the amount of eyes on us,
and cops are realizing that the good old days
of the thin blue line are over.
- This is where the marathon finished?
Oh, this is it right here.
- Yeah.
- Actually, we were both working that day.
I was two blocks up the street and--
- I can't imagine.
Then the radio just... goes crazy?
- You hear the first explosion.
[explosion]
You automatically know.
That's not good. - Something's wrong.
I was in the military so I saw, you know, things like that,
but if you never have,
that still affects you for the rest--
some people couldn't sleep for weeks on end.
Everyone else runs away, you have to run in.
- Right.
- It's just, you go in and do it.
You know, and says, "Well, weren't you're scared?"
it's not-- of course you're scared.
But guess what? That's what my job is.
- You think you're doing community policing
and you are and then suddenly,
uh, you got body parts
and your family panicking.
- Then if it all goes haywire,
now you have to deal with that. - Whew.
- It's just-- it is what it is.
- So we had a two-week grace period
where everybody loved us and we got tons of food and--
- Tons of food, everything, you know?
- But it got uncomfortable.
We liked it better when people called us assholes,
so once that went back to normal,
it felt a lot better.
- What's the worst crime Tom Brady could commit
and you'd look the other way?
- Running a red light. - Anything.
Tom Brady, I'd cover up his murder.
- Oh, sh--
- As long as he got back on the field,
another Super Bowl.
- See, Tom Brady--if Tom Brady was kicking a puppy
down the street, would you take him in?
- I'd take the puppy, I'd yell at it
for getting in the way of Tom's foot.
[laughter]
And then I'd send Tom on his way.
- Oh, man.
eople here, And then I'd send Tom if they didn't--his way.
if they weren't required to carry a weapon
would just own a weapon anyway?
How many cops would have a gun anyway?
Yeah?
I can get that.
I own a gun.
I think it's a gun. It might be a dildo.
It hurts.
[laughter]
I'm okay with guns. I'm okay with guns.
It's only when people get crazy with their guns,
like, they become obsessed.
I met a guy the other day.
He's like, "I can't sleep
unless I have my gun under my pillow."
I'm like, "Try Ambien, you moron."
[laughter]
Good to see you, Brian.
How you doing, buddy?
What's going on, pal?
Is this your lady right here?
How's it going?
Nice guy you got right here.
Nice guy you got.
He looks like Mark Wahlberg
if his mom drank while she was pregnant.
[laughter]
In other words, you look like Donnie Wahlberg.
[laughter]
Great to see you, Brian.
I did a ride along.
Brave dude right here.
So how often do you see guns around here?
- I think we--we got 15.
We got 15 guns last year.
- Really? - Yeah.
What do you guys want to do?
- Shoot somebody.
[laughter]
This is [bleep] boring.
I quit already. What a [bleep]--
- This is how most nights are, man.
- Yeah. - Shit.
- What was the name of the police officer
who was shot this morning?
- Kurt Stokinger.
- Is he gonna be all right? - I think so, yeah.
He took--it sounds like he took one in the calf
and he'll be okay.
- How does that make you feel,
going out at night after something like that?
- Puts you on a little edge, you know?
I mean,
it's scary,
getting shot or shot at, you know?
And just seeing it happen to somebody that you work with.
- So I'm wearing a vest.
I assume you guys wear vests when you go out.
- I do. I got mine on.
- I don't ever wear one.
Um, I don't ever give anybody a reason
to want to come at me.
What's up, guys?
- Can we get out?
- What's good?
He's roasting the police.
- I'm roasting the Boston Police.
- Like, can I smoke my weed, y'all?
- Only if you're gonna share. - Yeah, man.
- Gonna be an actor, so you know.
- An actor?
- Yeah, can he get on your show?
- He's doing a great impression
of a guy who's unemployed right now.
- Oh! No, he didn't.
- What about these two cops? You recognize these guys?
These are the best two cops in Boston, right here.
- Right, I haven't seen you in a dog's age, you know?
- And this is my friend who's an undercover cop.
I don't know if you knew about that.
[laughter]
- Time out, time out. Time out, time out.
Hey, yo, look, hold on, hold on, hold on.
This is what you call fur.
This shit right here is, like, Chinese pubic hair.
[laughter]
Hey, yo, check out Jesse Ventura,
[bleep] in a [bleep]-- - Shrunken!
- Jesse Ventura got short.
[laughter]
- Oh, dude, 'bout to keep it 100.
Hold on, hold on. - They just FOI'd us.
- Oh, what's this?
- [indistinct].
- Does this mean you can't go anywhere near a schoolyard?
[laughter]
All right.
- Thank you.
- This is what--this is what this is about.
This is what--come here.
Group shot. Group shot.
- You're good. You're good. You're good, bro.
- You know it.
- This is a goal--my goal
is to bring the cops and the community together.
- That's cool. That's cool.
- Comedy brings people together.
- Hell yes.
Laugh, you have fun, man.
You know what I'm saying?
- That's right.
- Makes life a lot easier.
- Hey, yo, I'ma tell y'all--
I'm gonna tell you all, real-- this is real talk.
Yo, cops killing black people.
It's not like that.
They're doing their job, man, you feel me?
I respect the real cops, man.
[bleep] the fake ones.
I respect the real ones, man, though, real shit, man.
You don't come out here
for violence and all the other shit, man.
We come out here to chill.
We come out here to see our family, man.
This is--that's why we up here.
- That's right.
- Y'all jack us, man, we coming up here,
we don't got nothing on us.
We--man, we like y'all just like y'all like us, man.
There's good [bleep] out here, man.
Real shit, man.
- Well put, Spike Lee.
[laughter]
- Right there, man.
Good stuff.
- Hey, yo, guess what?
I never did the right thing, though, man.
Check--yo, check my record, man.
I never did the right thing.
- Hey, man, you're doing it now, brother.
- I'd say I'd see you at the barber shop,
but you obviously don't go.
[laughter]
- Hey, thank you, Jerry Lewis. Hey!
[laughter]
- Yo, yo, read this shit right there.
- All right, guys, you got to move it out.
[laughter]
- I love you guys. I'll see you later.
How you doing?
Got a couple of school crossing guards
here in the front.
[laughter]
Look at this place. Wow.
This looks like "The Departed" with uglier people.
[laughter]
We're here for, uh, two wonderful charities,
Cops for Kids With Cancer
and of course, the Tom Brady legal defense fund.
[cheers and applause]
Yeah.
Everybody's been talking about the cops in America right now.
Very few people are actually talking to the cops,
so I put it out there that I wanted to roast
a major city police force
and they all said no.
Except one,
Boston.
[applause]
'Cause you got balls.
[cheers and applause]
And you got a good reputation.
There has not been an unarmed person shot
by the police here in 25 years.
It's amazing.
[applause]
Every day when a police officer wakes up in the morning,
his wife and kids have no idea
if he's even coming home that night
'cause he might fall asleep at his girlfriend's house.
[laughter]
You having fun at all? You okay?
Everything all right? You upset about something?
You're okay? What's your name?
- Pat. - Pat?
Everything cool? - Everything's great, thank you.
- How about your buddy here? How you doing, sir?
- That's my dad. - That's your dad?
Wow.
How long have you been a cop?
- Too long. - Too long.
Is it true you once gave a speeding ticket to Paul Revere?
[laughter]
You're old enough to be a member of both Tea Parties.
[laughter]
Great crowd in here, Commissioner.
Thank you. Great crowd.
Father and son cops.
Where my bicycle cops at?
These guys right here?
Congratulations.
I hear Boston just passed a law,
you guys can get married now.
[laughter]
Yeah. Yeah.
Way to go.
Mazel tov, mazel tov!
Yeah.
Where--where my undercover cops at?
[light cheering]
You're fired.
[laughter]
When I was a kid, I took karate lessons.
Cops, detectives in Newark, New Jersey,
were my karate teachers.
They gave me confidence.
I've always respected cops,
so when there was a protest outside my house recently,
I was curious because I wanted to know what was going on
and there were so many angry people,
so many people that were so upset with the cops
from all around the country.
I talked to family members of people who had been killed
and it broke my heart,
and those same people were screaming at the cops
that were right there protecting their right to protest.
The whole thing made me so sad and it made me realize
you can't paint everybody the same way.
You can't--hating all cops for what some cops have done?
That's also prejudice.
[applause]
It's like hating all Mexican people
'cause you got diarrhea from a chimichanga.
[laughter]
[groans] [bleep] the Mexicans.
I'm voting for [groans] Trump.
[laughter]
Congratulations. - Thanks.
- You just--just-- just became police officers.
- Yeah.
- Are you crazy?
Do you know what's going on?
This is the hardest time to be a cop ever.
- Well, that kind of made me, like, want to do it more.
- Why?
- I don't know, 'cause I like-- I'm from the city.
I like the people from the city,
and it's like, you know, as much as,
if they want to hate me that's--that's okay, right?
- We know what we're getting into.
- Yeah, we-- - We grew up around here.
- I don't really hate anyone.
- You grew up around here?
- I actually grew up, like, two blocks up the street.
- Yeah.
- Did you make fun of his hair when he was little?
- He didn't have that. - It wasn't like this before.
- It looks very dashing. - Thank you.
- I think the ladies are gonna like that.
- Yeah, no, I have a boyfriend.
- Oh, okay. - Yeah?
- This is interesting. - Yeah.
- So you're a gay cop. - Yes.
- In Boston. - Yeah.
- Don't ask, do tell.
[all chuckling]
- My boyfriend's a cop too. - He is?
- Yeah. - He's in our class too.
- This is like "Glee."
- We should have brought him here.
I don't know why he's not here. - Yeah, where is he?
- He's home.
- You guys play cops and bottoms?
[laughter]
- That's... awful.
- I got to give you credit,
one of the most diverse police forces
in the country right here, this police force,
is 22% African American,
8% Latino, 3% Asian,
100% Irish.
[laughter]
Even the chief's Irish.
Yeah.
What's up, Chief?
How you doing?
It's always great to have a chief shaped like a bagpipe.
[laughter]
By the way, commissioner,
is it possible to be pro-cop
and anti-bagpipe?
[laughter]
Give it up for Joe who played me out.
That was awesome.
[bagpipe plays]
[applause]
Love those bagpipes.
[screeches]
Sounds like a dolphin [bleep] Miley Cyrus.
Izzy, so if a Latino cop has a retirement party
they have the great Latino tradition
of bagpipes at his party?
How does it work?
What happens when a Mariachi band shows up
at an Irish family wake?
[laughter]
[Irish accent] Oh, poor Sean O'Malley.
[hums "Jarabe Tapatio"]
[laughter]
He was a fine, fine lad.
Ay, yai, yai, yai.
[laughter]
Tell me about your friend.
- Mikey Ramos always had a smile on his face.
[exhales sharply]
Christmastime 2014,
he goes home,
um, and he...
tells his wife, "Hey,
something's wrong. I'm not feeling right."
By the time the ambulance makes it...
Yeah.
- Thanks for sharing, fellas.
- That's why every day
when we put on this uniform,
we say to ourselves "We're going home."
I'm going home to go kiss my son and daughter
as they lay in their bed tonight.
That's the conscious effort.
- Let's go to your place.
You kiss your kids, I'll keep the wife company.
- [laughs]
She's out with her girlfriends having drinks.
- By the way, being a cop
I've learned from these ride alongs with you guys,
it's been-- it's a very stressful job.
Lot of cops have stress in their lives,
high blood pressure, you know.
If I was in charge,
cops would be able to smoke pot once in awhile.
[laughter]
Just goes out over the radio every now and then,
"All available units, we have a 420 in progress.
[laughter]
"On the roof of the precinct.
"BYO evidence.
[laughter]
"Afterwards, we're gonna turn the squad car lights on
and chill."
[laughter]
"Okay, love you."
[laughter]
[applause]
Some of you like that idea.
- Smell that mari-ju-ana?
- Oh, you smell marijuana? - Mmm.
- What if, say, for instance, we were driving along
and you saw a comedian
smoking pot behind a Dunkin Donuts?
- Here in Massachusetts, marijuana's decriminalized,
so anything under an ounce, you're good to go.
It's a $100 citation.
- Essentially, yeah.
- We take the weed, we'll destroy it,
we'll dispose of it. - Right.
- But you're not doing jail time.
- Doesn't it take a lot of pressure off the cops?
- Yeah. Well, here's the thing.
If a kid thinks he's gonna go to jail for having a joint
and he's all of a sudden going to start running from you,
and he's got his hands in his pocket
'cause he's trying to discard it,
but obviously somebody with their hand in their pocket
we can't see what they have,
we're gonna assume it's a weapon,
so obviously, it's going to heighten the sensitivity
of the situation.
- Doing a lot of things right here.
Decriminalizing marijuana,
which I think is really great.
I think cops have better things to do than lock up people
for the one drug that makes you mellow.
No one in history's ever done a bong hit and robbed a bank.
Hands up, this is a bank rob-- is that a lollipop?
[laughter]
This just in, our two suspects
were last seen in a getaway car going 12 miles an hour.
[laughter]
They were finally apprehended at a Burger King drive-thru.
Laugh it up, buddy, it's okay.
It's okay to laugh.
You don't have the right to remain silent.
[ice cream truck music plays]
- Come on up here.
Commissioner Evans.
Commissioner, I know you're a big advocate
of community policing and I think it's just wonderful
that you get out there
and you let underprivileged children cut your hair.
[laughter]
Will you tell us, just because there's people
who don't know what community policing is,
do you mind just telling the people
who might not be familiar with that concept
what it is and why it works so well in Boston?
- Well, it works so well here
'cause we got the best department in the country
and they get it.
[applause]
They understand that it's so important
to earn the trust and respect, of, you know,
of the people we police and I don't think anyone does it
better than the Boston Police and, you know, we're the model.
President Obama just recognized us
as one of the top in the country
and I'm so proud of everybody here.
[applause]
- And you go out in an ice cream trucks sometimes too?
- You better stay away from that, porky.
[laughter]
- You have cops hassle you?
- Definitely. - Every day we get hassled.
- Frisk you? - Every day.
- It's not about the hassling or the frisking,
it's the mentality you walk out of your house with.
- I would rather be in street clothes.
I'd rather be in sneakers so I could run faster.
When I go into a situation, it's already a negative vibe
and I may need to be a little bit more brass
because I'm a female or, you know,
I'm walking into a situation with six guys.
I need to kind of have my chest out.
I'm not gonna be your friend off the bat.
- How you doing? Hi, Minnie. Kerrie.
- 'Sup?
- Have you ever met a cop before? Like that?
- Not like this, right? - Yeah, I guess.
- How do I feel about cops in general?
- Yeah.
- I don't like y'all, no, honestly,
that's just my honest opinion.
- How come? A lot of people say that.
- Because, no honestly, my baby's father,
he'll walk to the corner, right?
He was at the corner
picking up my daughter from the bus,
and the cops jacked him, for what?
- Can't answer that.
I wasn't there. I wasn't there.
- Of course. That's what I'm saying.
Like, it's 'cause he was black.
We in the hood. This the projects, you know?
- Mm-hmm. - Nobody has a chance.
- What could change? What would have to happen--
- The police attitude.
They got bad attitudes and shit.
They real stereotypical, they real judgmental.
You know, they'll see somebody and assume that they like this
because of the way they dress or the way they walk
or talk and something like that, you know?
I want y'all to download my mixtape.
[indistinct].
- That was quite a plug for your mixtape.
And I want to try speed-roasting volunteers from the audience.
It's kind of like being racially profiled.
Turn my body camera on just in case anything happens.
[laughter]
How's it going? - Good, good.
- What's your name? - Joe Ross.
- Joe Ross, good to see you, Joe.
What do you do? - I'm in the crime lab.
I work in DNA.
- You work in DNA?
Nice--oh, no, never mind.
That's [bleep] gross.
Oh, my God, so you work in forensics.
Oh, you're one of the creepy ones.
[laughter]
So you work with a lot of, uh,
blood and jizz?
These guys ever try to get you to find out
who's [bleep] their wife?
[laughter]
- I can't divulge that information.
I can't divulge that information, Jeff.
- All right. Anyway...
How you doing, Izzy?
- I'm good, Jeff.
- This is your brother right here?
- No.
[laughter]
- This guy that looks like a male stripper?
[laughter]
Magic Mike?
And who are you, Tragic Mike?
[laughter]
What kind of cop are you?
- I'm with these, uh, crossing guards.
- You work on a bicycle?
- Yeah, I do.
- Does that, after a few hours, start to hurt your vagina?
[laughter]
That's great.
Why is your brother a cop but he dresses like a magician?
[laughter]
When your brother became a cop, did that inspire you to join?
- I think I was a cop before him.
- Really? - Yeah.
- Oh, shit. - Not really.
- Whoa. - Not really.
audience: Oh!
- He was a muni cop.
- A muni cop? Wow.
- It's just a security guard
of City Hall, libraries, and parks.
Just saying. Ask the crowd.
Ask them.
They'll tell you.
- Haters.
Haters.
- Izzy, that's great.
A lot of cops have family who are also cops, huh?
- Oh, yeah, yeah.
We're all a big family, but, yeah, most--
father and son, right there.
Yeah, there's a lot of brothers, lot of families on the job.
- By the way, I'm not so sure about the father-son thing.
What's that?
- You want me to do the DNA, just double-check?
[laughter]
- Find out. - All right.
I'll do the jokes, creeper, okay?
[laughter]
- Hog!
[audience cheers]
- Come up here.
Out of all the 2,000 cops in Boston,
how do you get to be the guy that goes--
gets to be at Fenway Park?
- I've got 30 years on 'em, that's why.
- What's the best part about your job, Steve?
- Um, all the free bubblegum I want.
- I got a feeling you're eating a lot more than bubblegum.
[laughter]
I've heard of first responders.
You look like a last responder.
[laughter]
I'd ask you to raise your arms,
but you probably didn't put deodorant on.
- I did tonight.
[applause]
- Wow.
Great.
I just think it's so great that the Boston Police Department
hires special needs people to be...
part of the Red Sox organization.
So, so awesome, Steve.
Good luck for the rest of the season, and--
What's your name?
- Rachel. - How's it going, Rach?
- Very good, thank you.
- Yeah, how long have you been a Boston police officer?
- Uh, about eight years.
- Eight years? You're so young.
- Thank you.
- What's the best part about it?
- Um...
getting to carry a gun.
I'm just kidding. Okay.
- Yeah, I could totally see that.
What's the craziest piece of evidence you ever, uh, hid?
[laughter]
- None.
- Are you married?
- Yes, I am.
- Do you have children?
- Yes.
- Would you ever want them to become police officers?
- Um...
uh...
If they want to be an officer,
I would support whatever they want to do.
[applause]
- What made you want to do it?
- Um, I always wanted to do something
in criminal justice,
and I just was one day, was like--
- You weren't smart enough to be a lawyer...
Does being a woman--
- I have a BU education as well.
- You do? So you're like me.
That's so funny.
What'd you study?
I know it wasn't fashion.
[laughter]
You're a lot of fun.
- Thank you.
I studied psychology and sociology.
- That's got to help, right?
You got to be a shrink to be a cop.
When we were riding around, Izzy, what did we do?
We picked up these homeless people.
You got to drive them to shelters and stuff.
Cops have to, you know,
work with the mentally... disabled.
They have to work with-- no offense, I'm just...
[laughter]
When you're sleeping at night,
do you ever accidentally grab your Taser
when you're reaching for your vibrator?
[laughter]
Are you having an orgasm right now?
Do you know this guy over here?
- Yep, we used to work together at--
- You used to work together at D4?
- Mm-hmm, yep. - Come up here, Darren.
Come up here for a second.
[applause]
How you doing, man?
I'm doing good.
You look great, buddy.
Thanks for dressing up. You look awesome.
Just 'cause you dress like a detective
doesn't make you one, you know that?
[laughter]
Took me out to, uh,
the marathon finish line
where you told me all about that day and stuff
and you're a cool dude, brave dude.
African-American cop.
That's never an easy thing.
It's like being a Mexican border patrol agent.
[laughter]
What's that?
- You know you have to leave here, right?
- I say these--
[laughter]
As a black man, does your family and friends--
do they give you a hard time about being a cop?
- No. No. Never.
- I actually think black men and cops have a lot in common
people don't even think about, like,
both groups wake up every morning
and put on a hat that matches their outfit.
[laughter]
Gets in a car that doesn't really belong to you.
[laughter]
And drives around with your homey all days.
[laughter]
You're a good man.
You're a good man, dude.
[applause]
Comedy, bringing people together.
[applause]
What's that?
- Can I go stand back over here now?
- Move along.
Nothing to see here.
[applause]
Izzy, what should people know about the cops
around the w-- country that they don't--
that they don't realize?
What should they know?
- We're real.
We're real. We got problems too.
That's it, you know?
Just understand everyone's fighting their own demons.
We got demons too.
- Ha! - You gonna--
[laughter]
Yeah. - That guy right there.
- You got an evil-- you got an evil twin.
[applause]
May the excessive force not be with you.
- Oh, thank you.
I cross my fingers every day
that we don't have a bad incident here,
like we're seeing across the country.
I go to bed every night hoping none of our officers
are ever injured at all.
- And they go to bed every night
thinking that you're Freddy Krueger
from "Nightmare on Elm Street."
[laughter]
- Who knows?
- Whew. Cops are a tough crowd.
They're skeptical, they stick together,
and they always have to have the last word.
I mean, they're [bleep] cops and we're stuck with 'em.
[bagpipes play "Amazing Grace"]
'Cause at a moment's notice, they're willing to transform
into soldiers running towards danger
or shrinks looking after our homeless.
To do that job perfectly
is impossible.
They're underappreciated, underpaid,
and sometimes they end up underground,
like Randolph Holder,
a third-generation cop from Guyana,
who was killed in the line of duty with an illegal firearm.
Holder protected the people of New York
and he did it with a perfect record.
But all cops aren't like Holder.
They're not all saints,
and the real ones need to step forward
and leave the fake ones behind.
I saw for myself that behind almost every badge
is a good person that just wants to keep
their neighborhood safe,
and they also have families.
So which side am I on?
I'm on both sides.
I'm on the side of transparency and communication.
And I challenge the most open minds on both sides
to get together and start trying
to understand one another.
Then maybe everyone will go to less funerals.
In the meantime, be careful out there.
These ugly bastards have guns.
Roast on, America.
Roast on.
Every day, cops put their lives on the line
to protect the public
only to find out that firefighters get all the pussy.
[laughter]
Stay safe. Good night, everybody.
Thank you very much.
[cheers and applause]