What did DJ Kaos really say?
His lawyer rolls tape
By Carol Daniel
For the St. Louis American
I’ve never been involved in espionage, but last week I felt as if I had entered the world of secret passwords when I sat in a church office in North St. Louis with an attorney and one other reporter and listened to an edited version of “the tape.”
This was the tape of a July 13, 2005 broadcast on hip-hop radio station KATZ 100.3-The Beat with personalities DJ Kaos and Silli Asz. It was a show that cost two men their jobs over claims they had taken calls on their show on how to harm police officers.
Who can forget early in July, when Kirkwood police Sgt. William McEntee was shot and killed in his patrol car. The alledged shooter, 19-year-old Kevin Johnson, was reportedly distraught over the death of his little brother, who had collapsed and died from a heart defect 90 minutes before the shooting. Family members claim police did not do enough to help the dying child, but instead focused on searching for Johnson because of a probation violation. Johnson turned himself in to the Northwoods Police Department on Friday, July 8.
News of Johnson’s surrender made it onto a local online message board. I have read postings from July 9 through 11, including descriptions of the Northwoods police chief as illiterate and of many Northwoods police officers as criminals and morons.
After being fired from The Beat, DJ Kaos hired attorney Scott Sherman, who believes the July 13th radio show was blown out of proportion.
The deejays were initially suspended. Clear Channel issued an apology and laid out plans for the pair to make amends. Meanwhile, the local chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police started calling for their dismissal and a boycott of the station’s advertisers. Kaos and Silli Asz were terminated on August 3.
Clear Channel did not release a tape of the show, and the Fraternal Order of Police president admits that he never heard the show. He even told me that hearing it would make no difference in their position. Okay…
In my column about the issue, I took the apology from Clear Channel as an admission that something was inappropriate. Sherman says the apology came from management and not Kaos, who maintains that he did nothing wrong.
So where did the edited tape that I heard come from? Sherman can’t say. Why was it edited? Sherman says he had only the music and commercials edited out. This is the point that raises an eyebrow.
I agreed that I would not take a tape recorder with me to the listening session. I have asked to interview Kaos, but he has not consented. I took several pages of notes on a yellow legal pad as I listened to about an hour and a half of the edited five-hour show. I did not transcribe every word, and I have not heard the entire show.
The main point of that morning’s show appeared to be the on-air survey of the worst police departments in this area.
One caller said, “Berkeley, because they always catch me speeding!” DJ Kaos responded, “You shouldn’t be speeding.”
A different caller criticized the Pine Lawn Police Department over an investigation of a burglary at her home, saying, “They suck.” Kaos explained that Pine Lawn had a new police chief and a new mayor and things were different.
Still another caller claimed she worked with dirty cops and they get what they deserve. Kaos said in a steady voice, “Nobody deserves to die.” He added, “These views are not the views of Clear Channel or the hosts of this show. This is what the people say, not what I say.”
Another caller said that a lot of white police officers would benefit from sensitivity training, because many respond to blacks out of fear and ignorance breeds fear.
It was then that Kaos said, “Let me say this: 80 percent of cops are punks, meaning without a badge and gun they’re nothing. They can’t even fight.”
Kaos claimed on the air that officers have told him that if they are arresting someone who is trying to talk gangsta, saying things like, “Take off that badge, I’ll kick your…” that the officer who is for real will oblige.
Then Kaos asked, “Silli, if you are in that situation, you trying to be gangsta, what’s the first thing you go for?”
Silli’s answer? “I go for the walkie-talkie.”
Kaos called him a smart man, saying, “Most people would go for the gun, but if you get the walkie-talkie, he can’t call the calvary in.”
Then Kaos added, “I’ll say this to the police officers that aren’t punks, that can go out and protect and serve even without a gun or Mace, to keep doing what you do.”
Are those irresponsible comments? Did they go too far?
It isn’t a conversation I would ever have on the air. I also don’t know too many radio station bosses who would say, “Sure, go right ahead with that ‘worst police department’ call-in show, eight days after a police officer was killed.”
Here is what you may find troubling: that an organization (of supposed public servants) could call for your termination and call for a boycott of your advertisers based on something they haven’t even heard.
And what of the vast majority of news reports on the incident that took the cops’ claims without question and the national broadcast publication, R & R, which described the show as “a clinic on how to fight and/or disarm police officers”?
Could the attorney have edited out such calls? Certainly. I am still pushing to hear the entire five-hour show, because the animosity between many black folk and many police officers doesn’t need to be fostered by misinformation or ignorance.
Surely there is something for all of us to learn here. Think before you speak, and listen before you react.
