Snitches Get Stitches: Why Some Communities Choose Silence Over Safety

You're listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for August 20, 2026.We open with a defense of local police departments turning to the public for help solving crimes, using a post from Shreveport Police Department spokesman Chris Bortolon to make the case that asking for tips isn't a failure but the foundation of constitutional policing, especially with only 400 officers covering a city of 180,000. We tie that into a broader conversation about the "snitches get stitches" culture that lets crimes go unsolved and argue that communities get the policing culture they're willing to participate in.From there we hit the top three things you need to know: three Baton Rouge judges suing the Landry administration over a decades-old voting rights case tied to redrawn judicial districts, a ruling that keeps judges on the bench for the Capital Area Transit System corruption trials despite the Attorney General's objections, and strong signs that SpaceX is negotiating with Governor Jeff Landry to build a new spaceport along the Vermilion Parish coast.We Dig Deep into a disturbing story out of Caddo Parish, where a former substitute teacher is accused of sending five false active-shooter alerts to local schools after she stopped getting called for work, and we praise the district for not rehiring her in the first place. We stay in Shreveport for a look at the city's new police drone pilot program, which arrived at calls before officers 74 percent of the time, weighing the efficiency gains against privacy concerns and the staffing costs of managing the fleet.We break down Nike's roughly 80 percent stock slide since 2021, debating how much of that is tied to the brand's shift into cultural and political messaging versus its decision to cut ties with retailers like Foot Locker. We discuss Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's on-camera conversation with his daughter Paloma about why he won't let her attend Harvard, and the larger question of how much influence elite universities have over students raised with strong family values. We cover the falling-out between Alan Dershowitz and Larry David, once close friends on Martha's Vineyard, now estranged after Dershowitz left the Democratic Party over its drift on antisemitism and his opposition to Trump's impeachment. We play a lighthearted guessing game around the Archbridge Institute's ranking of state occupational licensing burdens, with Oregon topping the list. And we close out discussing ActBlue co-founder Matt DeBergalis pleading the Fifth during closed-door congressional testimony, amid allegations of fraudulent donations funneled through the platform.Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776.