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Title
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Oral History Interview with Brian Raniere
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Description
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Brian Raniere of Chicago, Illinois was interviewed by Connor Caparos, Sewanee student, on February 14th, 2024 on Zoom. While their conversation was primarily on the Black Lives Matter Movement, other topics included: discussing his work as an Chicago Police Aviation Officer including during Black Lives Matter protests in the Summer of 2020 in response to the death of George Floyd. We hope that this conversation will assist scholars with a further understanding of race in the United States during the early twenty-first century. Please click on the link to see the full interview.
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Transcript
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Connor Caparos (00:01):
This is Connor Capros from Sewanee, the University of the South. It is Wednesday, Thursday, February 15th, 4:00 PM and I am here with Brian Rainier from Chicago. Thank you for being here.. So how did you first receive the news of the Black Lives Matter movement since you were a police officer?
Brian Raniere (00:39):
At the time this movement started, I was assigned to the aviation unit, so we would be all over. Well, I was a Chicago policeman. We generally worked for Cook County, so I would cover in the helicopter. We'd cover all of Cook County. 90% of our stuff was for Chicago though, and when the riots broke out or the protests broke out, we had to go downtown to give aerial support for our command staff. For downtown. For the loop is what the loop of Chicago is, what they kind of protect. It's the golden area of Chicago. So it's high profile and always on the top of the list of what they're going to protect in the city.
Connor Caparos (01:30):
Okay.
Brian Raniere (01:33):
We have downlink capabilities for our helicopter, so with our camera we can view what's going on and our command staff can be sitting at headquarters watching it live as we, so we're basically their aerial camera that they were moving around.
Connor Caparos (01:53):
Okay. Was there anything interesting that you saw from the helicopter camera?
Brian Raniere (02:03):
Yeah, I mean, it was complete chaos. I had been in the aviation unit for many years, and so I've gone through G 20 summits where we had organized protestors, dealt with a lot of high profile stuff. When the president comes in, we're always the first one, we're ahead one step ahead. So been on a number of these things. But for this particular thing, it was absolute chaos. There was no rhyme or reason of what was going on. It started in the loop, but then ended up going into all the different neighborhoods of Chicago and it was looting, just destroying property just to destroy property, just basically causing chaos.
Connor Caparos (02:51):
Yeah. Was that your just first encounter as well?
Brian Raniere (02:58):
Yes. Yeah. I was working at the time, so when you would see police cars on fire, you would see just dumpsters on fire. We were losing police cars, probably three or four a day of police cars just set on fire and that's stuff you don't ever see in the media. The media picks and choose what it wants to show, so they would never talk about that stuff. So that was the first day, first day you could see stuff erupting, but then as we were driving to work for days on end, you could see just as you're going to work to see people looting random stores as you're driving down the street. I distinctly remember a guy going down the street on 95th Street. He had a, you know what a two wheeler is? It's a two wheeler for delivering stuff. You see it on the back of a truck that you can lift boxes. It's just two wheeler filled as high as he could with booze, and he's just, he'd come out of a liquor store and he's just wheeling it down.
Connor Caparos (04:13):
Wow.
Brian Raniere (04:14):
You saw a lot of that in the neighborhoods, which you would never see before.
Connor Caparos(04:18):
Yeah. If you're on social media at all, have you seen any of this on social media at all?
Brian Raniere (04:32):
I did not. I'm a little too old for social media, so I did not see what was on the social media end of it. The only thing I really watch is if you see it on the news, so the media end of it.
Connor Caparos (04:47):
Yeah. So what was the police community reaction to all this? The Black Lives Matter movement?
Brian Raniere (05:05):
Well, if you look at Chicago, Chicago has what, on a weekend we'll have 15 people shot. That's a normal weekend, weekend number, and that's all black on black fraud. Those are all gang bangers shooting each other. So we look at it as, they don't care about it. They don't think Black lives matter, so what do you want the police to do about it? It doesn't seem like they care unless it's the media who fires up people because they broadcast stuff over and over again.
Connor Caparos (05:51):
Yeah. Do you guys think that it's changed your lives in any sort of way going through that time as police officers
Brian Raniere (06:05):
Going through the time? No, because most of the guys you deal with the protests and you've been through that. It's the aftermath of that's really changed policing, and I guess that's kind of the goal of what Black Lives Matter was. I mean, that's definitely one of their things was they wanted police accountability. They viewed it as there's too much police brutality, and so now the police are definitely hands-off and not proactive compared to what they were. So there's really no proactive police work happening right now.
Connor Caparos (06:42):
Have any implications gone in like laws, posts after all these things have happened?
Brian Raniere (06:52):
We've, for Chicago, for the police, we are governed by our general orders, which are basically our guidelines for the police. They're not necessarily laws or the police way of doing things or how Chicago police expects you to do something, and they definitely come up with more and more restrictive general orders. So you really can't do any proactive police work. They don't want you doing foot chases. We can't chasing cars, we can't chase on foot. You can't. They're making it so hard to actually approach somebody and try to do regular police work. When I started years ago, you knew who belonged to what area you knew who didn't belong, and so you stop those people. Now, what they're doing, why they're there, that stuff doesn't happen anymore.
Connor Caparos (07:53):
So it's like, would you say it's kind of like in a way, segregated, everyone just is in their own area still?
Brian Raniere (08:06):
Yes. Chicago has always been kind of a segregated city in the fact that each ethnic group kind of sits in their own area, and we don't really cross lines, but it's more of a language barrier. You'd have immigrants move in and they would go areas where they knew the people and they could speak the language and speak. The food was the same, the churches were the same and all that. So that's why that was really segregated. The west sides and the south side are generally black for the most part, and they keep to themselves, the gangs kind of controlled those areas and they won't let the Hispanics in there. The really reason the only white people are going on the west side is to buy drugs. So the drug trade is still going on, but the segregation is definitely still there.
Connor Caparos (09:06):
Okay. So has the movement impacted your life in any way, do you think?
Brian Raniere (09:19):
I don't know if it's kind of a loaded question. I don't know. I don't know if it's police work in general has impacted my life.
Connor Caparos (09:30):
I've been as a police officer. Do you think, are you still active or No?
Brian Raniere (09:38):
No. So I retired about a year ago, still in contact with all the old workers and all that stuff, but definitely out of it, I moved out of the city, so I live in the suburbs now. I have no desire to be in the city, which is a shock. I always love the city, and I think that's coming from kind of the BLM stuff in those riots where it was just complete chaos. In the result of that, with the lack of proactive police workers, to me, people don't feel safe down in the city. Kind of anything goes,
Connor Caparos (10:22):
Is this not even, I don't know what that street is with all the restaurants not near the United Center, because if you're near the United Center, isn't that kind of a iffy
Brian Raniere (10:39):
Area? That's Madison Avenue. Yeah, it's Madison Avenue. If you go east from the United Center, you're fine. You go west, that's when you start getting into the west side, and that's where it gets rough.
Connor Caparos (10:49):
And
Brian Raniere (10:50):
Downtown, like the Gold Coast on Rush Street, state Street, Michigan Avenue, which generally are always the very touristy popular areas. Those areas were always very much controlled and looked after, and they aren't anymore.
Connor Caparos (11:11):
Wow. So
Brian Raniere (11:12):
The tourists are getting a little surprised, and the people who generally go down there and spend the money for the tax money to generate tax dollars, they're not going there as much.
Connor Caparos (11:26):
Yeah. Has the movement affected how you talk with family and friends at all?
Brian Raniere (11:37):
Yes, it definitely has. I mean, there's definitely, especially with politics today, there's so many. Everybody has their side and their opinion, and they think they're right, but nobody wants to have a conversation. They just want to talk at you, not to you. So they have their opinions and they don't want to think that they're wrong, so they won't listen to any experiences, any of that stuff. So you definitely have people on both sides of the bio that will not talk, and I think it's gotten worse since all that BLM stuff.
Connor Caparos (12:17):
Okay. Has it changed how you interact with people of other races?
Brian Raniere (12:25):
I wouldn't say it has changed, and I would think most of the older policemen that I know, it hasn't changed them. Police work has changed 'em more than just the BLM part of it. The outcomes of BLM with the more restrictions on police work has jaded a lot more people because they see what's going on. They know how to fix it, but you're not allowed to.
Connor Caparos (12:59):
Wow. How do you think that the movement has succeeded at all? Have you seen ways that it's been peaceful ever?
Brian Raniere (13:19):
Yeah. Oh yeah. I definitely think, yes. I think it's succeeded in the fact that it brought that their opinion to light. I don't necessarily agree with it with their view, but I think they've gotten their message out to a lot of people. I think they failed in some other ways, but I think overall, I would say their message, what they've tried to get out did get out.
Connor Caparos (13:54):
Okay. How do you think it's failed?
Brian Raniere (14:02):
You have, well, what I brought up before where you still have all the shootings on the west side, you don't ever see if a policeman shoots somebody, you'll see it all over the news. You won't see that 15 black kids were shot over the weekend. So there's still a kid on the west side is more likely going to be shot by somebody his own age or somebody around him than he is the police. So are they better off? I don't think so, because getting less and less police work. So you're getting people who are more and more emboldened to do whatever they want. So I think it failed there. You had the leaders of BOM got in the news for buying mansions and spending all the money. So I think the organization just snowballed and they became too big, too fast, and they didn't know what to do.
Connor Caparos (15:04):
Right. Yeah. What do you think is the state of race relations in the us?
Brian Raniere (15:18):
I think it's media really plays a role in it, a negative role in it. If you were to sit with me in a squad car and drive around on the west side or the south side, you would see coppers talking to people. You wouldn't see the animosity that the media portrays it to be. They love, love their little media clips and they love to see people screaming and yelling in the camera, but it's really generally, or at least my experience of it, it wasn't there. So I think they love a great story and to sensationalize stuff. So I think the media is the biggest prop. I don't trust the media at all.
Connor Caparos (16:08):
Yeah.
Brian Raniere (16:09):
I remember being working midnights and I'd be at downtown on the Gold Coast and you'd see a shooting or something, or you'd see, and I'd come home and I'd see the media report and it would, what they said on the media was it had nothing to do with what that was,
Connor Caparos(16:26):
That particular time. Do you have any examples or stories of that?
Brian Raniere (16:34):
No. It's been a while since I've been on the street. No, there's nothing I can think of off the top of my head, but it's just the way they portray it is amazing and has nothing to do with what actually happened. They never let the facts get in the way of Good story.
Connor Caparos (16:59):
What do you think the future of the Black Lives Matter movement, what do you think is the future of that?
Brian Raniere (17:14):
I see it kind of puttering out. I see it slowly going away because now the media's new little baby is the immigrants. So all the people crossing the border now, that's what they want to focus on. So BLM kind of takes a back seat because they want the latest and greatest story.
Connor Caparos(17:41):
Do you think that it'll ramp up again maybe before the next election?
Brian Raniere (17:51):
It is possible. The election years always. You never know what's going to happen for, you can always say, if anything, come up for an election year. I see the immigration being the biggest problem, not, I shouldn't say problem, biggest story for this election. So that's why I see BLM taking a backseat to that.
Connor Caparos(18:18):
Yeah. Which generation do you think was most affected by this movement?
Brian Raniere (18:32):
I would say people who were in their late teens, early twenties
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Who
Brian Raniere (18:45):
Were down in the city, had the biggest change in their opinion, both ways. I think they saw some of the stuff going on, but they also, there was a lot of people who jumped on that movement and wanted to be part of it. So I think they were old enough to come up with their ideas, have their ideas be in the city, but still young enough to, and young enough to be involved with all the social media and that end of it.
Connor Caparos(19:23):
Yeah.
Brian Raniere (19:24):
The older generation that just the social media passes 'em by, so they don't see it as much as the younger generation where everything for people your age, a little older, everything's in your face on your phone all the time. You're constantly bombarded with stuff.
Connor Caparos(19:44):
Yeah. Do you think it's changed your opinion on any aspect like this movement at all?
Brian Raniere (19:59):
This movement has not changed my opinion at all. I still think there's problems with poverty. There's problems with the people involved with BLM, and they don't want to really come to the realization of what really is the problem. Every one of the
(20:25):
Situations I bring up for BLM, George Floyd, all that, all the other coming after that, there's a couple shoot police involved shootings, none. As I look at it as a police officer, none of those situations were, and I'm not justifying the policemen in any of these. I would pick figured out to pick and choose, and I could pick apart any one of their tactics. But there was a compliance issue in all of these situations, and I'm not saying you have to be fully, you just have to be complacent whenever police officer's there, but there was always some sort of struggle. There's always some sort of fighting going on. So the situation's escalated, and that's where you see that more in general with the black community.
Connor Caparos (21:22):
Yeah. Have you seen anything influential about this movement?
Brian Raniere (21:30):
Influential? No. I mean, the fact that you're talking about it in school is I think one of the big ones there. People are constantly talking about it, but I don't think it'll have a long-term influence on their message.
Connor Caparos (21:53):
Yeah. Well, that's actually all the questions I have, and I think you did a good job.
Brian Raniere