 Thank you all for coming. I appreciate it. I'm Perry Bacon. I'm one of the fellows here at New America and we're launching this series of, there'll be some discussions and also some pieces as well. And the idea is from moment to movement and to look at criminal justice and racial inequality after 2014 and some of what happened in Ferguson and other things as well. So we want to get into a, we're going to have a broader discussion about that today and also throughout the year. So I'll introduce our panelists who are here today. We've got an excellent panel of people who really study these issues really well and I hope we'll come up, come away from some learning from this and broaden out our perspectives as well. And we'll have about a half an hour for questions at the end after we, after the panel speaks as well. So I'll start beside me. Terry Adams is a professor, associate professor of administration of justice in Howard University's Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Her research takes a multi-disciplinary approach to examining issues that have both theoretical and practical implications. Her civic interests include emergency management, policing, violence against women and the impact of trauma and disasters on individuals and organizations. We have next Rashad Robinson, who is the executive director of the Color of Change, the nation's largest online civil rights organization. And then beside him, we have Monica Potts. She is a New America fellow who's writing a book about the post prison lives of several men after they returned to West Baltimore and exploring the idea of a second chance to recovery. Monica was before an editor at the American Prospect covering poverty and economic opportunity in the U.S. And then finally at the end, we have Scott Roberts, who is the senior campaign manager of the Advancement Project. Before joining the Advancement Project in 2011, he worked as an organizer and shredded us on electoral and issue campaigns, including the 2008 Obama campaign and other campaigns for workers' rights, health care, marriage equality and immigrant rights. So welcome to our panel and welcome for you all as well. And so where I wanted to start, this is an opening, would be what I want to ask you all is, did we learn anything in 2014 about race or criminal justice or did the media start covering things that we kind of all broadly knew about? I'll start with you, Scott. Thank you. First of all, thanks for having me here. It's a pleasure to be here to talk about these important issues with this panel. I think, you know, it depends on who the we is that learned, you know, I think probably folks on this panel didn't learn too much about race policing. But I think the larger public did. And I would I would really say that it's been a slow build in consciousness around especially the criminalization of people of color and especially young people of color. I think, you know, we can go back to as far as, you know, if it's like Jenna six, but especially more recently around the trademark Martin killing Jordan Davis. We've kind of seen this kind of slow build of folks paying closer attention to kind of vigilante and state violence against people of color, especially black folks. And you know, you've seen over that time, more folks plugging in more things being shared social media, I think has played a huge role, obviously, getting the word out. And then when when the Mike Brown killing happened, and Eric Garner killing happened, especially, we just see that kind of really blowing up. And I think a lot of that is from, unfortunately, it's a really sad state of affairs, but it's too much practice that our communities have had and telling these stories. And I think we're now at the point where we're able to articulate and tell the narrative of what's happening in our communities in a more powerful way. And so with each event, more folks are paying attention and the word is getting out. Yeah, I agree. And I think that what's different in addition to the narrative being clear is that there also is just more evidence. More people have video camera capabilities on their cell phones. And so you're just seeing a lot of things. You know, these I think some of the events of police brutality are no surprise to communities of color in the cities, perhaps, but actually seeing the way that police act in communities may be a surprise to people, you know, especially white middle class Americans who live in the suburbs and may have never seen the way that officers act in those situations before. Yeah, I actually have to agree with what both of my panelists have said. And I think a lot of that has to have to do with not just the changing fact that we all have cell phones, but that, you know, the sort of current platforms of the time allow for a changing way in which we can share information. So for instance, 23 years ago, when the videotape of Rodney Kane being beaten on the LA Highway surface, it actually took days for it to surface. Someone had to videotape it, and they had to make a decision about what they were going to do with that video. Then they sent it to CNN. Then the folks at CNN had to sit around a newsroom and decide whether or not it was authentic, whether or not they were going to contact LAPD beforehand. They went back and forth around this. And so for years, it's not just that white middle class America has had to, white middle class America may or may not be on. So white middle class America hasn't seen these videos happening. In order for this information to surface, it had to be validated by corporate media. And so the stories had to be validated. It had to be said that this was true. This actually happened. What we now have is that everyday people have the ability to amplify and share their own stories, whether that's through like, you know, Twitter, whether that's through, whether that's through, you know, online platforms. And that sort of changing way has moved us into this age of, from communications and engagement to the age of participation. And that has changed the way we organize in general. It's changed the way that people see themselves as their own third party validators, their own leaders. We're more likely to trust someone sometimes on our Facebook page and the information they share than we are, the talking head on any television network. Sometimes mine are too. And I say that, and I say that, and I say that to say that the idea of who's a leader, who's an expert, who's a validator on these issues, those old rules are blowing up. And so in terms of what's changing in this sort of current state, that has led to this sort of cultural presence we have around this issue, where we have a heightened awareness that this is happening. Now, just because people know about it does not mean we have the cultural power to change anything. So as much as things have changed, there's also the way in which many things are still the same. Sure. I would echo what the others have said that I would also add that I think what Ferguson has highlighted and other demonstrations around the country is the level of frustration people feel so that this is nothing new. There are incidents similar to the Ferguson incident, as well as the incident in New York is again, it's nothing new. This has been going on throughout time. But people are more and more frustrated about it. And so here you have a generation of folks that people have basically said, these kids are really just into social media. They're not really paying attention to political problems. But yet they're out in the street protesting. So I think it demonstrates a reemergence of activism. And it kind of forces us as a society to really look at these issues that communities of color have been dealing with. As Scott mentioned earlier, this is nothing new. To follow up on that, let's define what exactly do you in your view is the problem? Is the problem that police officers are behaving badly? Is the problem that blacks and Hispanics and the police are not getting along? Is the problem something about our laws, where our laws are not set up in the right? Whereas the problem about our police practices? What exactly when we look at last year, how will we define or is the problem as our society is racist? I mean, what how do we define the problem? Maybe two or three of those things can all be at the same having the same time. But what do you think of this is the problem we're trying to the next in the next year should solve? I'll start with Richard. Oh, I think there are multiple problems. I guess I didn't come to New America Foundation to talk about solving racism today. As much as I can, I can talk about that for a while. I just don't know if we have the time in 90 minutes to actually dig into that. So what I will say is that we have systems of power in this country that have no accountability. And so police officers acting badly are a symptom of the fact there's no accountability that time and time again when police officers sort of misbehave or or act out of line when it comes to black and brown bodies that there is no accountability that there's no system of justice when that happens. And that is fueled by a larger culture and society which consistently validates that every year at the top 100 television shows on TV, 20 of them are crime procedures. And every once in a while in one of those low on order shows, you'll see that. Oh, it really wasn't the person that it's that it was supposed to be or we were tricked in the black guy was a good guy. But we actually that's all sort of still validating this idea that that when the even when the police officer step out of line, where we've watched him for five or six seasons, we understand their backstory, we understand their humanity, we understand their their problems at home or their problems with alcohol and they're humanized. And each episode we have like a guest star of black and brown character who is either guilty or innocent. And that sort of then fuels a culture where a criminal justice system that is unfair where there's no incentive to go after police officers, political or otherwise. In fact, district attorneys and prosecutors are de-incentivized to going after law enforcement officials because they have to work with them every single day for the majority of their other jobs. And so to the extent that we have a system of power in this country that has no accountability, everything then flows from there. Then it creates no trust in communities. And when you have no trust between communities and law enforcement, you have more problems. And so I do think that when you have a system of justice that at its core is unjust, you end up with all these other problems that you laid out. Anybody else want to follow up? I would also add to that, but I think it's it's both the problems with individual officers bringing their biases to their jobs. But it's also reflective of the culture of some police departments, such that when you think about it, we all bring our past experiences, our well-reused into every situation that we encounter. But the difference between a person with a badge versus a person without a badge is that the person with the badge has the right to use their weapon and force against you to potentially take your life. So I think it's really important that those individuals are cross checked regarding how they perceive other individuals. And I say it's also related to the organizational culture because I do believe that some police departments do kind of allow this way of viewing others to exist. So so that it doesn't get checked, as you mentioned. And there are some police departments that are actively engaging in looking at these issues and trying to adjust the biases that they see with among their officers. And we can talk about that a little later on. But I think it's both the individual officers as well as the culture of the police departments. I agree with all of that. And I just like to add that it's actually very difficult for communities to seek justice for this after it happened. So it's very actually hard to bring a lawsuit and say these laws are unfair because they disproportionately affect communities of color and communities of color are disproportionately policed. You can't really do that inside our criminal justice system for all different kinds of reasons. And it's probably getting harder to prove disparate impact because the Supreme Court has signaled that it doesn't like to find laws have a disparate impact on communities of color. So I think it's also very hard for communities to come together and actually seek redress for the ways that they're unfairly policed. And there's there's the there's the accountability of disciplining and even criminally punishing officers who are the bad officers. I think there's also this the accountability that the the systems or the departments have to have right. How does the community take more control exercise more power in this relationship with the police. It's not about trust to me. It's really about power and who is answering to whom. And so I think you know when you see a lot of communities fighting for things like civilian review boards that's what they're trying to exercise is that some kind of community authority over police. But unfortunately a lot of that is also reactive to things that are going to happen to us. And I think what we really need to do is is some of the things I'm just talking about how do we set up a system where police are more accountable to communities. I think we've seen some really scary stuff in New York where the police don't even feel like they are accountable to the mayor. You know if the mayor is not in charge of the police force you know who is. And I think you know it just in terms of the other thing that's driving this I think we have to look at policing as a part of the larger system of mass incarceration that we have in the United States when we're incarcerating folks at higher rates than any any other country you know we have to take a deep look at what how policing and the other bad practices we see in policing are driven by that. When we're trying to feel well let me say this police you know the prison industrial complex become a billion dollar industry private prisons are booming and they have bed guarantee contracts with states where they states have to fill up the prisons. And so there's and you know this maintains a kind of racial caste system so blacks are targeted other people of color are targeted it leads to the higher you know levels of contacts that we see with police which often lead to these violent occurrences they also lead to you know the the more insidious impacts that police are having in our communities by criminalizing folks taking people out of our communities punishing people for things like addiction smaller level offenses so I think we have to you know put in the in the context of that whole system and really think about how some of these other factors are driving some of the police practices. Just to follow up on what Scott just said the police are basically the gatekeepers for the criminal justice system so if they are operating with biases that are kind of forcing them in a way or giving up the predisposition to focus on some versus others then you're going to see more black and brown people in the criminal justice system. And if you look at self-report surveys where people actually are asked to report whether or not they have been engaged in criminal activity there's very little differences between what let's say black juveniles report versus white juveniles but if you look at arrest and incarceration statistics you see a flip of that right so it's not necessarily about the numbers it's more about the numbers of folks who are actually committing crimes it's more about who's getting arrested who's being targeted. Yeah and I think that that's true and I want and I absolutely believe that there's this like we have no national standard around bias in this country so like police or police departments local level are funded by the federal government and they all have to say that they do anti-biased training but then there's no national standard so Kalamazoo says they do anti-biased training Birmingham says they do anti-biased training LA and they have to just say that they did it and there's no sort of sort of there's no there's no check but beyond the beyond the question of sort of the individual it's not just about the individual bias there's actually a larger incentive to the way that black and brown communities are police the first question that local law enforcement officials have to answer on the form for to get federal funds is did you increase drug arrest not did you need to increase drug arrest not then then there's no follow-up around where did you increase drug arrest from there's no disaggregation of data there's no comparison so they simply have to continue to increase drug arrest so beyond the individual bias beyond whether or not like I have individual bias for one community or the other if I have to increase drug arrest in a community I'm going to go to the communities that are going to have the least amount of power to push back on my policing I'm in New York I'm going to go to Brownsville I'm going to go to the Bronx I'm not going to go to the Upper East Side and increase drug arrests there because at the end of the day they've got it they're trying to increase their federal funding and so yes absolutely on an individual level but on a larger systemic level bad policing is incentivized by our federal government just through how federal funds flow into local police departments and that is something that actually can be fixed by our justice department and that's sort of part of the larger national demands that you know many of the organizations that have been working on the ground in Staten Island and Ferguson other places have been pushing as well I want to come back to that sure the NYPD wanted to go to the Upper West Side and increase arrest for drugs it totally could because it's not as though drug use is not also there right and so I think that's part of the larger point that people have been experiencing is that there there are communities that are just untouched by some of these unfair police. I'm not a police expert and I suspect most of the people in the audience are not either but there are two ideas that I've read a lot about one is the idea of broken windows policing the other is the idea of community policing might like I wrote a good piece about this can you talk about those ideas and maybe if they should be changed in some way. Um yeah I mean so my experience actually with this was that I used to work for the civilian complaint review board in New York City before I was a journalist and you know it's interesting that you bring up the idea of community policing because the CCRB in New York is actually relatively powerful especially compared to a lot of other cities and one of the things I saw there was that there are a lot of very minor crimes over which officers have discretion and so they are tasked with going into communities that are largely poor and largely black and Latino and making more arrests for very very very minor crimes and the idea behind that is that that will prevent larger arrests on the road that's the broken windows theory that there's a that if you let a level of disorder persist on the streets then that will sort of create the environment that allows bigger and worse crimes with like murder and robbery with a lot of victims and no one wants murderers and murderers and robberies to happen and so there's a lot of support for this general idea now it's really debatable whether broken windows caused this the decline but what followed after New York City imposed the broken window policing theory was that crime did drop really substantially and so a lot of people credit broken windows with that but you know what's really happening is that you see on the streets that there are just some communities where people are policed very very heavily for very very minor crimes and there are a lot of statutes that are extremely vague and so if you're standing on the street corner with your friends in a community like Brownsville you might be stopped by police who tell you to disperse and that's a lawful order and if you don't follow it you can be arrested for disorderly conduct and it's a completely and totally unfair arrest and it feels unfair to the people being arrested but you you don't have the authority to protest your arrest on the street and so you see a lot of people who come in and when I was at the Civilian Complaint Review Board I saw this a lot of people who come in with a constellation of charges that are just sort of trumped up but it's within the officers discretion and what they're technically describing breaks the law so if they come in and they say oh you know these guys were standing on the corner I asked them what they were doing they started causing a scene other people around them saw them and started to get agitated I started to arrest them and they resisted arrest and so I arrest them for all of these crimes those things are technically crimes and so that officer has not acted badly he has not committed misconduct but overall what you see is that the people brought in for those crimes really weren't doing anything wrong they weren't really disturbing the communities and they are police like this constantly and so it just helps generate a lot of tension it increases the contact that people in this community have with police which means they're more likely to have an incident that where police use force against them they're more likely to be hurt they're much more likely to be killed than the communities where these kinds of interactions don't happen at all and they're more likely to have contact with the criminal justice system which just really I cannot exaggerate the extent to which that potentially destroys their futures you know if they want to fight that charge then for the next two years they're going to be going out of court all the time they a lot of people don't do that and so they plead guilty so now they have a record and that just a really snowballs for the rest of their lives and so they're just communities in which almost every person between ages of 13 and 18 comes into contact with police regularly and that shapes the rest of their lives Terry can you talk about the data what does the data show did broken windows work is that useful useful strategy and should we think about changing that as a as an American culture I think in theory broken windows is a good practice I mean it makes sense to clean up on the little things that are happening fixing the broken windows making sure that the trash is picked up properly you know maintaining the community that makes sense but when you get into some of the practices that you talked about that's when it causes people to feel like they are constantly monitored or that the community is actually being attacked now most of people who live in communities around the country regardless of what community you're talking about whether there's crime in the community or not or obvious crimes let me say most people are law-abiding citizens so if you are a law-abiding citizen you're walking down the street and you just happen to talk to your boys on the corner but yet the police are coming up and harassing you you're gonna have feel some kind of way about those officers which then again goes against the community policing model so I'm not really answering your question let me ask you a question I'm kind of jumping the questions there if you look at the data the data shows that as you mentioned the crime actually did drop let's say in a city like New York when they did institute the broken windows on policies however there are some scholars that assert that it was really has really been about fluctuations in the economy than it was about any particular policing practice right so depends on how you want to look at the data okay but kind of getting back to the community policing model which is something that you mentioned too that model was supposed to fill the gap between or help to heal the tensions between the community and the police such that you would bridge the divide between the two now most police departments in major metropolitan areas claim that they are using the community policing model but the model is going to differ in how it's instituted here in DC then you see in Baltimore then you see in LA and so on and so forth so in the main I would argue that in many jurisdictions it is not really being instituted now there are some communities like explain what good community policing would look like to me a little bit good community policing looks like officers actually getting out and engaging with the community on a daily basis it looks like officers literally going out and walking the beat actually spending time within the communities so I know in Milwaukee the police chief there has taken on this cause of dealing with the tensions between the community and the and the police and he actually has his officers walking the beats for at least one hour a day okay so that's so is supposed to again facilitate building trust as well as relationships so that if I see you on a daily basis you might be more inclined to talk to me if something happens in the neighborhood and if I'm talking to you you might be more inclined to not feel that I'm judging you or that I'm hostile towards you so it's really again building trust between the community and the police but not all police departments actively engage in that some might just have a program you can't really officially impact the community by just having one or two programs within the community that you just have a handful of people participating yeah there's two points now I absolutely agree in the idea of community policing I run a civil rights organization with over a million members who have been active on police reform but they sometimes need to call the police in their in situations and they want to be able to trust that when police show up that the police are going to be responsible and they're going to do their job and there's going to be accountability when they don't the fact of the matter is so much federal dollars going to local community policing already and we could incentivize that type of policing across the board what we will never be able to do though at this point is to rely on this department or that department to just police themselves because that's the situation we have now to just trust this department over here to implement good policing and that department over here because in some situations you probably will have some departments that will try and do a good job but those are probably the departments that we didn't have the big problems with to begin with on this on this other issue of broken windows and sort of the the sister or cousin to broken windows is this is this other piece around how local and small jurisdictions around the country even big jurisdictions like New York City to an extent close budget gaps through broken windows type policing so in a place like Ferguson for example over 25 percent of the city's budget was on these small infractions like traffic tickets and and parking tickets and it was a tax on the poor over and over again when the police when the police went on their sort of slowdown in New York City where I live you know so many of the stories in the newspaper were about the the millions of dollars a week that the city was losing because the the city wasn't giving out tickets crime was going down there weren't giving out tickets but the Spinaw folks are worried that we're not going to be able to because the tax on the poor because these tickets were largely being given to poor people that the city was the city was having budget shortfalls so these the issues that bubble up when community can't trust law enforcement don't just just don't exist around issues of sort of like you know issues of violence or issues where people are being rested it it is this sort of over policing the kind of control of black and brown communities that exist from the state and and the way in which it impacts people every place from the courthouse to their bank let me follow up on this moniker over this a little bit too and I think this in some of you in some ways this New York police slowdown was you all probably didn't agree with why they're the why they probably approached it but the actual result was not necessarily the worst thing in the world is that kind of where you where you think yeah I mean yeah hey go ahead we're kind of stumbling into something you might broadly agree with go ahead yeah and I also just want to follow up on this yeah that actually all arrests went down 66% and as far as I know the city did not stop functioning and there weren't people who were victims of crimes being unevented there was no mass chaos and so and they said what they had said was that they were arresting people only when they had to which seems like what they should be doing all the time and so you know what Matt Matt Taibbi the writer for Rolling Stone called them was backdoor tax collectors and that's really what they are like if you look at what the broken windows theory was talking about that kind of low level disorder you could argue that actually picking up trash and cleaning up graffiti are services that cities should provide anyway that those maybe aren't city services that should be dealt with through the criminal justice system and so what's happened is that cities don't really have much of a tax base and they haven't for a lot of years and now that it's growing again and so really what maybe what cities should do is tax people a little bit more and actually think about providing city services across the board including in poor communities that might have a harder time creating bids or you know business improvement districts and other things like that where that so those services are taking care of privately yeah well I on this question of broken windows I just feel like from the starting with the question itself right you know is it working you know there's a lot of assumptions there and I think there's the assumption that we evaluate broken windows by just one metric of whether or not reported crime is up or down and don't look at the other outcomes that the policy has you know getting back to increase contact with the police arrests more people being incarcerated I mean are those really the outcomes we want from a system to fix one problem to kind of create the next one in other words you're saying even if it reduced crime if they resulted in 20 other problems this is a bad policy anyway right and so the question is I mean can we get more creative with how we're dealing with issues in our communities and I think what's really interesting to me when I look at some of the local work that's happening around the country are folks who are pushing for alternatives to policing so you know work with there's a coalition of folks down in North Carolina a group that I work closely with the spirit house they've are they've had some success in getting community peacemakers and keepers in roles that police traditionally handle like trying to resolve conflicts we've done a lot of this work an investor project on the school to present pipeline where we see a lot of youth groups around the country pushing for programs like restorative justice in their schools where a lot of times young people are leading discipline processes in schools where they're talking and working out what are the real issues underlying conflicts within the in the within the schools that the schools are contained environment and it's easier for I think for us to imagine what alternatives look like in schools but I wish that we could apply the same type of thinking rather than saying are you know A, B, and C forms of policing better what are the alternatives to policing that we can be pushing forward in our communities and especially once that our community get in control to get to this point that Rashad's been making about what is the accountability we have this institution that's constantly in our communities the communities of color at a much higher rate and having more contact with us we don't have control over it how can we take away some of the roles that they're playing you know how do we when we talk about this money that's coming in I've been working closely with a group of folks involved in groups like Ferguson Action Black Lives Matter we've been talking about divestment from policing not just saying use the money we definitely talk about this too like using the money to restrict what police are doing to better regulate them at the federal level but also how do we take that money away and invest it in communities and things that are going to help resolve some of these issues I mean we know a lot of what's driving police contacts these drug arrests that Rashad is talking about like we know there are other alternatives to dealing with addiction dealing with the economic conditions that foster the drug trade in a lot of communities so you know I think we should be thinking outside of the box I was going to ask a question about what are some better police practices you all have seen you sort of told me one already are there other examples of that police practices that are better at dealing with these the police practices that are a replacement for what we do now that work well that you've seen and you think could be modeled in other communities I think what Scott is talking about is having an alternative to the policing itself but and I think that's something that should be on the table but to answer your question I think there are some departments around the some here and there around the country that are doing some innovative things I know the police department in Baltimore Commissioner Bats is working on actually extending the normal practice of requiring officers to receive sensitivity training which has really been heavily critiqued as not really being effective to more testing them for their personal biases and then trying to come up with training program programs to target those specific biases so I think that's innovative the one thing I worry about with that question and because there are some places that get held up as models from time to time and then the political dynamic changes in that community or that that that you know chief who was considered you know a great a great leader gets you know goes off to the academy or or gets bumped up to a a bigger city with a different political dynamic and either can succeed there or not is that in the process we keep dealing with these like large-scale issues in really small ways and not implementing the sort of broad sort of systemic change that we actually need and we rely on sort of individual interventions to solve what is not sort of like an individualized problem we actually need large-scale interventions at the federal level to to deal with problems that are not new like yes we've had an heightened and cultural awareness around what came out came out in in Staten Island or Ferguson but these are not new occurrences and over and over again when these issues happen we go back to the board of like you hear mayors in the city we need more training we just if we had some more money for training that would be better if we had some more money for this that would be better but at no point are we actually putting in place a type of accountability the type of sort of mechanisms that actually force people to be fired from their jobs when they when they step out of line that that actually take away resources when police departments don't do what they're supposed to do and and and put them under control that actually in the the policies of putting tanks into communities when they're having problems instead of putting community policing in when they're having problems with communities and so to the extent that I agree with all of the all of the sort of ideas and we've seen places where they work my biggest fear is that we hold up models that don't stick around because what we don't put in place is the mechanisms that that force them to have to to be in place long term and so they become at the political will or political whim of folks who either are incentivized or de-incentivized to do it based on how the public is voting and any given sort of you know electoral cycle which you're pointing to well to deal with that really would be complicated because policing is local right so it's not we don't have a national police force like some other countries do so it would be difficult for the federal government to come up with a mandate that then local police departments or local mayors within a debt right but it's not a saying that's not true but so much of the federal dollars right but you can put in provisions such that in order to receive funding from the Department of Justice or from the there's actually an office of community policing you could put in you know a measure that's a clear form right right where there are where the clear form where that local departments have to fill out when they get federal dollars they all fill it out they're not turning down federal dollars you know they you know they'll turn down Obamacare then they won't you know it they're not going to turn down these dollars right so to the extent that we that we put in place but I guess what I'm saying is is that allowing local local governments from here to there to make different decisions has never benefited black people in America it is not like from a civil rights perspective it has never been something that black folks in communities of color can have rely on is to have sort of these individual sort of fiefdoms that decide whether or not there's going to be fairness or not and that our rights change and our ability to be fairly treated and respected change from community to community so I actually I completely agree with sort of all of the measures that folks are talking about on the table I guess my fear is that those measures without sort of the teeth of the federal government without the sort of dollars forcing them in place are sort of ideas that we'll never be able to get comfortable with because they are they are at the whim of folks who find it to be politically incentive that are politically incentivized at the time to do it and the minute there there is an incentive to do something else our politics tells us in this country that people will do something else and and that is essentially the problem and that is the problem with the fact that all of these policies are not necessarily new all of these ideas are not necessarily new the reason why we don't have them is because we have not had the teeth behind them and in this organizing moment in this moment where we have people who see this as a cultural present moment where they want to do something about this building the power to make something be systemic and in place I think the only thing that we can really count on and only thing that we can do that's going to allow us to look back at this time five, ten, fifteen years from now and say that we actually made a difference all right, so Rashad you're saying it should be at the federal level so okay so what are the ideas that okay so let's say there's there's money that the police get from the federal government and we want to attach strings to that what are the three or four strings you all want to put on that funding you only funding from the Department of Justice if you do x, y, z what should x, y and z be Rashad thought about this so once you go ahead and everybody else can there's three things what do you want to see the three things is that we need a usable matrix around force um nationally like we have no we have no usable matrix around how force is treated and as and as a result like we don't we don't there's not any and there's not any mechanism for accountability for how police officers use force there is no national database when someone is killed or harmed in police custody right now and so as a result we don't actually have a full understanding of the of the of the scope there has been federal legislation that's passed unfortunately there's no teeth behind the federal legislation so in fact while police officers police local to peace environments are told they have to report it there is no penalty for not reporting it so what happens they don't report it and then the third thing I would put on the table is that there needs to be in place you know peace officers in all the departments across the country we have about 40 of the 50 departments around the country that have peace officer trainings that have sort of real in place mechanism for reviewing and firing police officers but there's nothing at the federal level it's actually sort of the only licensed practice right are doctors in this country if they step out and do something medically wrong there's a review board that can decide to take away there's license lawyers there's a way to take away there's license teachers there's a way to take away their license police officers there is no sort of standard for sort of how do you get fired a police officer and so from state to state city to city there's different ways in which that is done all while our federal dollars are flowing into these departments at really a large scale so those are three things that I would put on the table there are many more but you said to it Scott all right um forget limiting I agree but yeah they were sure I took all the good ones um the I mean I would second the data piece especially I think the data not only tells the story nationally but allows local communities to better you know campaign for changes that they want to see to better have an analysis of how their police departments are operating we've seen that returning against an example school for the pipeline as we've been able to get better data from the federal government around school discipline issues like suspensions arrests expulsions local communities have been able to use that to get change at the local level as well the training pieces I think are crucial you know one of the training and also this kind of standard around the use of force that we can get departments on the same page on these things I think it would be crucial I think just one story that stands out to me is what's happening in Ohio right now there's a couple cases in Ohio the case of John Crawford who was the young man who was gunned down by police in a Walmart because he had one of the toy guns that was for sale in a Walmart and then there's the case of Tamir Rice who was a 12 year old boy shot in Cleveland by police again having a toy gun in a park and both instances you saw police respond in a very aggressive kind of swat style and what we found out about the officers in the John Crawford case they had just been through training on kind of active shooter situations and the training had been very provocative to get you to basically go into Rambo mode run into the situation take down the person whatever so I think you know one of the things that folks are calling for there is training and I think if the if we can use kind of a incentive of federal funding to get folks on the same pages around you know training data collection it will be crucial you know I would say one issue with the federal this federal strategy is also also very subject to the whims there's a lot of yeah I'll come back to that but there's there's a lot that can be done at the administrative level which of then of course like you know we don't know how many air holders are gonna be in office in the future I want to come back to that whole issue of when Jeb if Jeb Bush is president how are you gonna move the issues differently so we'll come back to that but we go ahead yeah three three ideas about three things you'd like to see Monica or Terry well I just want to echo what everybody else said but also say I'm scaling back the drug war in whatever way possible there is actually I think a pretty big appetite for that there are state budgets that are ballooning with prison costs and it's a large number of people who are in jail for minor minor drug offenses their drug their drug addicts and they're not necessarily drug you know drug kingpins which I think you know is the popular idea and people's minds for a long time so I think that I think that there's actually conservative and liberal consensus around the idea that we need to actually reduce the number of people in prison related to drugs and so I think that's one of the things that's within political reach pretty quick you know pretty recently and the federal funds that you what if you the police problems get federal funds what are things they should do to get the federal funds I would just add to two other things I think that it's really important to re-examine the psychological testing that officers are supposed to undergo before they were even accepted on the force I think most police chiefs don't have any idea what metrics are actually being used by the psychologists that they hire to do that type of testing I think the other thing would be to really focus on monitoring trying to remember what the the concept is called but it's like instituting early warning systems so some departments have this where you look at the complaints that are actually coming in from citizens really evaluating the data that's coming in about people and seeking to reach that person before they become too aggressive or use excessive force so kind of taking a proactive approach to to dealing with your officers you've done this work on implicit bias can you talk about that and how it relates what we're talking about today in terms of how do you we've all they've talked a lot about politics but I think part of it what reason we want you to do on this panel is you've done a lot of academic research about implicit bias bias people don't necessarily know they have how does that fit into the right so I've not necessarily wrote on these issues but it has it's something that I have been investigating so it is really difficult to grow up in this society without having some biases really I mean we could all fit up here and act like we don't have biases but most of us do but how many of us are aware of those biases and if you're aware of them how many of you actively seek to alter your behavior right so what I argue and what other scholars have argued I should say is that it is difficult sometimes for people to become really aware of their own biases and lest they're really participating some real self-reflection and so like I said earlier we all come to any situation with our past experiences our world views our core values and beliefs and we bring that again to every decision that we make such that whether or not if you're aware of your biases that can influence how you interact with people right it's can influence how you with judgment you make about people that you interact with and so when we talk about the police I think is really important for us as we've been kind of harping at today is really important for police departments to really take note that this is something that not only impacts the rights of people but it also degrades the policing process if you're focusing more attention on some you're ignoring potentially ignoring others right other crimes that are being committed and I wish I could cite this study right now but I can't but there has been work that it's been done has actually shown that when you focus more on just profiling that you are ignoring a large segment of the population that's actually engaging in criminal behavior did I answer your question a question thank you sorry last question and we'll move to the audience after this Monica expresses optimism about Republicans and Democrats working together that I I cover politics I do not share this optimism on any issue particularly this one but I want to ask a broader question which Rashad we're talking about federal action if you may he knows this Congress not passing a lot of bills that the president wants to sign states have a lot of these say a lot of the states have these same kinds of things and also what I've seen what I at least what I feel like right now is the the movement right now can it's consisting a lot of black and brown and white liberals and therefore Bill de Blasio found this problem of there's doesn't seem to be a lot of consistency in New York a fairly liberal place he was not able to find a lot of he got criticized very sharply for what we're making comments that I thought were not terribly controversial so is there an idea or a theory here about how do you take whatever ideas about police reform you have and make sure that they don't become the latest part of our partisan divide in America where because we already know that President Obama and Eric Holder are on one side which makes the other side think they should be opposed to these things so how do you take these issues and turn off the sort of depoliticize them is that possible and how do you do that Rashad I think you thought about this a lot as my guest yeah so two weeks ago I testified in front of the president's commission for 21st century policing which is the sort of recent commission they've developed with a host of experts and everything that I presented on from on behalf of color of change members were things that could be done by the justice department right there are not things that need congress at this point and come back to the no no no no no no no no but I will get there I will get to that so there's also there is also this specter of right and left coming together around a certain set of issues I've actually been in a number of meetings over the past or a couple of meetings over the past six months where like first time I go into a criminal justice meeting and I'm the only black person in the room and making sure I'm in the right meeting on the right side and like a little concern like if I get set up and in the room with sometimes people that my organization has caused a lot of trouble for through our campaign work and so I say that to say I say that to say that you know there's a piece of the right the right of evangelicals of libertarians who are looking at the budget and who are looking at potential collaborations and they're going to be sort of a number of bills at the federal level I don't necessarily know how much faith I have and how far they're going to go or even how much damage some of it may do how many things that the compromise might be and how painful that might be to this moment all that to say I certainly don't think that anyone doing this work in this moment thinks that victory or progress is going to be easy and in order for us to sort of build the powerful movement necessary to actually get any politician to sort of come on our side on this issue we have to build an agenda that forces political leaders to come to us on this issue and that's going to have to not just rely simply on coordinating anyone on the left or the right politically in this upcoming primary season but sort of leveraging this moment of people being activated and engaged and building the type of platform that forces people to have to take on some of these issues because like I said in my opening around the difference between 23 years ago with that Rodney King video tape having to go through multiple channels before it reached the marketplace and today is that these issues simply are not going to go away we are not in the same type of media space where corporate media has to validate these issues coming forward or corporate media can say well we covered three of those issues last week we're not going to cover they're going to continue to happen they're going to continue to be amplified and community is going to continue to be mobilized and those in power are going to continue to be made uncomfortable until we start making some progress on these issues so politicians are never our leaders or our advocates on these issues they always have to be pushed they always have to be challenged they always have to be made to feel uncomfortable and that's what movement building is about let me get civic here because you laid out something that I thank you so your idea essentially is we're going to have a bunch of ideas on policing that you ask Hillary Clinton, Rand Paul, Jeb Bush to endorse is that what you're sort of is that what you're repeating for me well yes we're going to have a number of things and I actually believe that what we're already seeing from the justice department is a number of things being put in place now we're seeing changes being made we're seeing a commission that will hopefully implement some things they're certainly not going to implement everything that we want a color of change the fact that matters is the goal then is to defend and fight for the things that get implemented that we care about and force the candidates to have to talk about a set of issues that we have to force this conversation this debate and yes I see there's going to be differences and disagreement we already see it on the Republican side there's going to be one candidate on the Republican side that's going to probably be saying some things they're going to probably make some Democrats uncomfortable and there's going to be some real disagreement on the on the Democratic side around this and this is the moment I think for those who are doing movement building to have to really sort of make some decisions about who do we support who do we fight against who do we make uncomfortable and how do we turn this movement into the type of movement that like got us healthcare that got us some of the things that like the repeal to don't act don't tell that got us some of the things where we make those in power uncomfortable and force them to have to see this moment of cultural presence for the cultural power that exists let me ask you all two questions three of you so the two questions based on who you said do you all agree that it's a federal issue or do some of you all think it should be done at the local and the state level one and then the second question about how do you avoid this becoming or make this less partisan too so who do you all want us to start I mean I don't disagree with the with this federal strategy I mean it's like Rashad said I mean historically it's one that has been applied on you know economic accommodations voting rights you know certainly the statement about the leaving things in the hands of power in the hands of local government being never good for black folks is you know pretty consistently you could prove that unfortunately you know you know we might need a constitutional amendment to really give the federal government the kind of power we wanted to have over policing so I think it's a both and situation you know there's I think there are a lot of things that have to be done at the local level to reign police in and federal requirements is one strategy to get us there but I think we have to capitalize on a lot of this energy that's going on in the country right now and get it behind local campaigns we need to create some models figure out what's working at the local level while we're pushing at the federal level I think a lot of it you know one thing is it's hard for the federal government to set a standard if there aren't some places that are trying different things and they're being shown to work so local wins will be crucial to getting to that point I believe not that they haven't already happened like I think one of the things that's left out these conversations a lot of time is there are decades what the work being done by people in communities that have let the local victory some of them we've lost also like Rashad has talked about so you know I think it's a both and in terms of local and kind of federal strategies was that another part of the question how do you make the issues less partisan oh I don't think they're partisan I don't think that there's a real dichotomy between Republicans and Democrats on mass incarceration on militarization I think they're they're typically aligned I think a lot of the times I think the Obama administration is you know somewhat better I think that a lot of Democrats I mean look at Missouri you know who was the governor in Missouri you know how many he's how many things that that Jay Nixon just totally screw up around Ferguson you know I mean not only that but you know letting the letting the conditions foster in these places it's I don't I don't believe as partisan at all if you look at you know the last Democratic president before Obama Clinton you know we saw a ton of federal spending on police putting police in schools and the wake of things like Columbine and the drug war so I don't see it as as partisan I think just I was just in the same shot exactly right we got a pressure both sides equally can't let Democrats off the hook but because we're typically with them I don't think this is a situation we'll find that and I think that one of the biggest problems is the police lobby is incredibly powerful they have a lot of power both in money and but by the position that they feel in our society they have a lot of leverage on people in power so that's what you're really up against you know is folks who don't want to see that change I don't know then politicians also because you know cultural things we have where we we view police as equal to safety in a lot of situations police are very timid and taking I'm politicians are very timid and taking on police so I think it's all about pushing making it so uncomfortable even you know when the when folks came out with the shut it down strategies that was intentional saying we've got to make things to the point where it's so uncomfortable for people that we have to deal with this situation because we're waiting for a political will from either party I just don't think it's there Professor Monica here in the NSF I just want to clarify that I don't imagine a coming bipartisan Nirvana happening on the federal level but but I do think there's an appetite in states and especially in conservative or including in conservative states for reducing their prison budget and so I think that that's where you'll see a lot of actual kind of demand and maybe local action on sort of the things that they have discretion over like who they decide to arrest people you know I mean who they decide to arrest them while for so there's there's some a little bit coming maybe of that I wouldn't add anything ready for some questions somebody in the front Hi my name is safe I made 3L at American University Washington College of Law I had two quick points and questions one directed to Scott you talked about community policing and how that was important now my thought about that is although it's a great idea the knife cuts both ways so if you have colored communities policing themselves you're also going to have white communities doing the same thing and that's that's where you got Trayvon Martin's type of cases where it was the neighborhood watch it was just somebody policing their own community so I just wanted to get your thoughts on that and the second point was I'm also writing a paper on implicit racial bias and the judicial aspect of it but my thought is you suggested training to police regarding implicit racial bias and there's many jurisdictions that currently do that for example LA's has that in place right now but I don't think that's enough so it's what would be your ideas from transcending the classroom into actual practice is one thing to learn it it's another thing to actually practice it and how would you do that? So that's a that's an interesting perspective and I think just to clarify and I know you're not saying this I just want to clarify I'm not suggesting that we have armed vigilantes in communities peeking out their window sitting in their car you know or that we you know that's that's not the alternative to policing that I'm talking about the what I'm talking about is how do we deal with kind of the lower level things that are having our communities and give folks with skills right not just you know a neighborhood watch is not to me an alternative you know an alternative is a group of folks who've been trained up on conflict resolution for instance right if there's a incident going on down the street you know you call a number to the to the to someone who's a peacekeeper as opposed to the police right if they had that in a white community that sounds okay to me I think of course in every community just like with the police we're going to have a lot of things that Terry's talking about about the implicit bias coming out you know do I worry about a white guy resolving a conflict between people of different races also worry about what I got doing it but I especially worry about a police officer doing man because he's got a gun and his biases then you know can really escalate to some real damage he also has a power to arrest people so you know has real impacts on people's lives so those are types of things that I'm talking about I think you know we we got to deal with that vigilance anti-ism and what not as well but you know when we're talking about alternatives those are the types of things I'm talking about but I think and this is just a point about the resources again so we're not we're not saying just pull police out of the communities let the community figure it out right we're saying invest in the communities in programs instructors in communities that help to deal with some of these issues like addiction like beefs local community beefs if you will you know things like that as opposed to dealing with police question I think what you're getting at is how do you get people to really truly buy in to the training basically so you can be forced to do something and you do it because you got to check that box right or you could really really take it on as a personal challenge and I think what will generate that is having more and more open dialogues about race about bias and having people not just the police but people in general really thinking about these issues and I think it is possible to see a shift and cultural changes around how people view each other I just turned 60 so forgive me the organization that's famous for propagating stand your ground laws all over the country Alec Alec I was wishful thinking is there a progressive Alec that is getting into the hands of local and this is would be a great job for the immense advancement project getting applications good proposal funding proposals and legislation into local police and and the other quick question is anyone trying to get prisoners voting rights because I think that would change the ball game working on these issues right so definitely on the second one we've been working on yeah people are working on that as well I think the and there are like a couple states where folks currently incarcerated people can or at least one Vermont and Utah yeah but there's definitely folks working on that as an a ton of folks who are working on getting folks once they've gotten out getting their rights restored in terms of the progressive Alec or racial justice Alec or whatever I think what Alec has done is a couple of things they have develop model legislation and promoted it through conservative circles and they've worked really closely with legislators and I think there's definitely some work right now of folks trying to collect those kind of legislative models at local and state levels and obviously there's a lot of federal demands go ahead well yeah well there I mean there's been over the course of the last 20 years there's been a number of different versions of the progressive of the progressive Alec from the progressive states network to progressive policy network there have been a number of groups that have been around for five or 10 years and they've went away the the challenge with Alec and color of change is a deep relationship with Alec um is that Alec you know gets its money from corporations and they're pushing corporate policy so stand your ground law was actually part of the funding strategy that Alec had with the NRA and Walmart Walmart was the largest is the largest seller of guns so they were pushing stand your ground to sell more guns and um and so part of the progressive side of that is that you'd actually have to find the right funding model that didn't rely on like you know that didn't you know you're not going to get you oftentimes don't have the same type of corporate connections for a lot of the progressive policies we're trying to push and so the challenge for a lot of the progressive versions of Alec over the years has largely been that funding question so yes you can put together a packet of model legislation on a wide range of things that progressives care about but then you actually have to fund getting state legislators the training and all that to get it out there and that has been a challenge a few days ago that I think the NAACP is working in 13 different states on at least 13 different states on different ideas to change policing in the state legislator because then so there is movement on these issues already in states from people who want to see changes of police practices yes I'm Ralph Eubanks I'm curious about the the change in the policies at the federal level that you were all talking about and wondering how you actually think those will be enforced at state and local levels because one of the things that comes to mind for me is just thinking about this is a completely different situation but the resistance right now judge more in Alabama to actually enacting something that is a federal policy and I wonder if you think you might see similar resistance to these type of policies coming from the federal level and going down to the local level absolutely I think they'll absolutely be resistance but you actually have to have something for someone to resist to start down that road right and then we're actually talking about judge more now and having this conversation because he's actually resisting a federal policy without it right you don't have that and there's been a number of states right where the idea of marriage equality ever existing let alone existing now through the courts seemed like you know a far off dream and so Alabama may be the one place but you've seen this enacted over and over again a number of states where couples have gotten married and have been getting married and so to the extent that yes we're seeing some back and forth with judge more and him not doing this I think history tells us that judge more is going to lose this fight that he's going to lose this fight he's going to go down this is like you know I guess you know his biography moment but but we and so that is but that is my whole point around getting federal policies because there is such resistance that with there is such resistance to some of the things that are pushing that without that we don't even have the teeth to battle the judge more to the world on our issue Hi I wanted to ask a question about movement building specifically regarding have you guys seen arise the number of allies whether it be criminal justice issues like police saying or prison related to for example mental health like have there been a rise in organizations coming out to really participate in movement building like across different I guess different organizations and then the second question was kind of about not to imply that there won't be federal reform or state reform but are there other options that citizens can invest in reforms that don't have to do with legislation that that we should be thinking about and saying okay this is the way I can participate I can take this second question I think having federal reforms is important but again policing is a local thing such that local police departments can apply for funding but they they don't have to right so I think it is important for people at the local level to really push these issues within their jurisdictions for their mayors who the police chiefs ultimately have to respond to for them to push change within their police departments um look this let's yes let's really quickly then for that I think but we're in some of its targets here who are the people who have the power to make some of these changes and even beyond the mayors I think police chiefs themselves are are big targets they have a lot of discretion in terms of the way that their departments are going to implement policies are going to do the work of policing so the body cameras are spreading based on police departments themselves saying we're going to try this right it's ultimately you know in order to maintain their positions you know they um I don't I wouldn't say they need public support but they they but if they don't have public support they need to fly under the radar so they if you make their life hard enough a lot of times they might be responsive as well so I think outside of elected officials or some of the folks with some kind of force they do rely on public support but ultimately the police chief is selected by the mayor so if the mayor if people are putting pressure on the mayor then the police the mayor for sure is going to put pressure on the police chief and I think that that's why the movement building is so important I mean we've seen you know in the just in the aftermath of of the of Michael Brown's death and then the after and then the aftermath of the of the non-indictment the number of sort of progressive allies who don't necessarily work on criminal justice every day taking the color of change petition and making it their own and sending that out to their list and building engagement from members has been tremendous you know we delivered nearly a million signatures to the White House from a a broad coalition of progressive groups who wanted to stand on this issue and then just to answer the second question you know later this year we're going to be really continuing to build out our presence in Hollywood we've been doing a lot of work in Hollywood in writer's rooms and challenging scripted and reality television particularly around the images that it presents you know we led a campaign two years ago to get cops off the air at Fox and we won and they have not been per day have not produced any more episodes of after 25 years the sort of first reality show which was cops which was the glorified look at the war on drugs and its impact on black and brown and poor white communities and and from from that strategy as well the outside of the legislative strategy the cultural strategy because while I want federal and state and local policies that's actually not going to stop people from killing us and and so we also need cultural strategies as well and so that is definitely part of our advocacy efforts and you know you can go to colorofchange.org and find out more about sort of our represent our media justice work which I think is really an important lever in all of this more questions? okay my name is Joshua Serrano I'm an intern at the Institute for Policy Studies up the street here but I'm born and raised in Brownsville, New York Brownsville Brooklyn I heard that thrown around a few times today so I guess mine is sort of a comment question is to see how you guys feel about it right because I I like a lot of the things I heard today about different approaches from the federal level and different things that can happen locally right but what I am consistently seeing with this issue of mass incarceration is that the existence of mass incarceration in America is actually I don't know what it does to black people in this in this country at this time it's something that America does to black people in general with throughout all of this history which is to take those lives chew them up and spit them out right and so I mean I don't know I just think about things when we talk about this right as like you know today there's more people under federal under supervision under criminal supervision in jails and in federal prisons than there was more African Americans than there was at the height of the slave trade you know and so this is obviously a very very important racial justice issue and so as a young aspiring activist how important do you think it is to use race as the central rallying I guess the thing that galvanizes people to get behind this issue instead of talking about maybe the fiscal constraints of imprisoning so many people or what we can lobby our elected officials to do you know what I mean what how do you feel about using this as the 21st century civil rights issue go ahead the event is I think in some ways it is being used that way but I think in order to get more people to move on the issue or to in order to move it from a concept or I don't know how to phrase this correctly but I know what I'm feeling in order to move it from something that we want to something that's actually going to happen you have to come about it from a variety of different angles right so you're going to have to bring in those people who maybe you don't talk about race so much but you talk about citizenship maybe instead of just focusing in on the issue of police bias we focus on police bias and police practices so I think it's a matter of addressing the issues from a variety of different ways to really get at the heart of what we really want to accomplish well I think you use race because actually race is woven all through this right and as you pointed there if you look at American history you know there's a lot of history behind how blacks have been oppressed in this country right but moving from that to actually pushing policy there are some people who aren't going to want to hear all that history but yet you could still move them to move in the right direction to change policy you understand what I'm saying I don't think this is a question of using race or not you can't avoid race on this issue and so we can't organize or build campaigns we pretend race is not a fundamental piece of what's happening here because it's in the room it's like having like a big elephant in the back of the room and then pretending like the elephant's not here and us just trying to continue this panel and like the elephant's making noise back there race is in the room it is clear and it has and it's an animating force and in so many of the ways that people are dealing with the criminal justice system that said this country has 3% of the world's population and incarcerates about 25% of the world's population 25% of the world's incarcerated population so for instance a white man today is 3 fourths as likely to be incarcerated as a black person a black man at the height of apartheid in South Africa so if white privilege gets you a 3 fourths discount right on being not being in South Africa like if that's what white privilege does in this country we have the ability to also build real support in real allyship with white folks in many states around this country who are seeing their incarceration rates go sky high so it's not about avoiding race or pretending it's not happening or not even having it at the center of so much of the campaigns and the work that we're trying to do here but talking about a larger system a larger caste system racial caste system in this country that's led us to a set of policies that are not just hurting black communities anymore but are hurting all of us and helping people see themselves inside of a black struggle for equality where they can see how their own communities are being hurt as well and I think that that's going to be the way that we sort of build the type of movement where many people can see themselves inside of it while they're simultaneously supporting and building allyship for people who don't look like them Hello my name is Nicholas Lewis and I'm an intern at the American Civil Liberties Union here in Washington D.C. I just a quick question do you feel that segregation and the history of segregation in this country actually allowed the ideas of racism and the layers that are all that are involved concerning race and validity validity of the socio-economic issue that's happening here in America do you feel that segregation is basically the spark of all of this issue I think segregation helps to intensify it because communities aren't interacting with each other but you know this country was really founded on racist principles so you know let's not act like that that's not reality and to really get into this it would take me like 20 minutes to really explain this but I I think you know what I'm saying just to answer your question I think segregation intensifies the differences but it's not as simple as that I think the first thing I remember is the most integrated period of American history was also probably the most stark race this period that's slavery right we're all living on the same plots and everything in that period and but agreed it segregation maybe not worsened but it it creates new avenues of issues so the biases that we've been talking about that police hold often I think you know if we were less segregated people had more interactions with people of different backgrounds I think you can break down a lot of those a lot of those biases are formed based on media representations type of things that Sean and his team are fighting against and I think the other thing that segregation has done it is has cordoned off you know access to economic promise of America so you know when you're going to segregated schools that are less and I mean both pre and post Brown versus board right like you know de facto segregation like we have now we have less opportunities in communities you have then you have less empowered communities communities that can be again targeted by police who need to up their drug arrests or need to write enough tickets to meet the budget shortfalls for the for the small town of Ferguson or somewhere like that so you know segregation definitely plays a role and then of course when you're segregated it's very easily suggest target a community right like how are we go I know there's there was one small municipality you may remember just a shot in in St. Louis County where they were having black day this was not Ferguson it was what was the name of this place I can't remember but they would have black day where the one of the officers would one of the leadership for the police department was like we're gonna fill up the gels with black folks today and they were just glad to do it how do you do that well they all live in the same neighborhoods you just go there right so you know segregation definitely you know it flames it you know get a couple more and then we'll yeah okay I'll try to do this as quickly as I can my name is Tony Whitehead I am retired and professor emeritus of anthropology at the university of Maryland and I actually I came to this event today because I'm organizing an event that I refer to as the African American incarceration epidemic and I use those terminologies to to really deal with the fact of the vicious cycle of incarceration failure re-entry re-incarceration and also the impact that it has not just on the individuals but on families and black communities in other words to survival of a people and so I came because I wanted to hear the panel I was very impressed with the panel I like to talk about systems the fact that you address these issues at the national the local and the individual level and also the issues of only talking about race confrontational for movement but I also want to emphasize the issue of dialogue for values the whole issue because a lot of times when you are confrontational or you don't even have to be I talk about dialogue a lot but some of my white colleagues still think I only talk about race and well they even admit to me that I frighten them but there are others who I can talk to and they will say Tony I never thought about this let's work together and move it forward so I appreciate this and I want to get in touch with you guys later to see if any of you would like to come to my event at the end of April thank you can I say something of course first off I've read your work and you've done some phenomenal work in your field and he actually could be on the panel but I think the point you mentioned about values is one way that you can cross the divide between Republicans and Democrats because really what we're talking about are upholding American values of equality right right can I just say one more one more point one more point one more point one more point one more point one more point I became aware of my own of my own values because I grew up as a sharecropper in the segregated South multi-generational and I wrote a piece in which I talked about I didn't know I was black until I went to Turkey as a Peace Corps volunteer in 65 I would still use the word digrow I didn't I had to go to Turkey to discover that I was an American because of segregation and they helped me with those things and the thing about American realizing that I had values that we in America had for example the unconscious value of using your time productively Turks ran me crazy because they put a lot of time in social relationships rather than making money but that that put me in touch with my own values you're our last one so there were some studies that have put support for police at as high as 80% and kind of thinking of that alongside that structural racism and implicit racism what do you do in communities where this type of policing may not even be seen as a bug but in fact a feature that's a really good question that's a great question yeah I think what you're asking is how do you get buy-in from communities where this doesn't seem to be an issue I think again getting back potentially getting back to the whole issue of values if we say that we are a country that values equality we have to really mean it and it doesn't matter whether or not if you personally are being impacted by this issue don't you think that everybody should be treated equally it's the same thing with the right to marriage issue right if you think that everyone should be treated equally whether or not if you are or gay or lesbian you should potentially support the issue because of the notion of equality somebody else well I would just say that it's really important not to leave everything up to popular will and I you know I think that it's one of the things that people have been talking about as far as federal incentives a lot of that is setting standards and putting money behind it so that you know it it removes from the process a lot of these kinds of problems yeah I think the kind of the issue that he's raising is also you know how do we get to the point where we can win federal you know those kind of policy changes if we can't mobilize those kind of communities which you know make up the majority of the country and hold a lot of political power and I you know for me I think it is this is a really tough question it's like the question maybe the I think these communities do have to be confronted with what's happening consistently I think you know everyone is talking about the Selma movie right is that that moment on the bridge where folks were confronted with what with the reality of the country was even though it wasn't their personal reality sparked a lot of people to talking about it to action I think you know some some maybe oversimplified in the movie but that's another discussion but you know similar to I think the videos of the killings especially I think the Eric Garner video was really triggered I mean I saw people literally go from defending Darren Wilson to once they saw the Eric Garner video saying oh maybe there is a problem you know it's like some of that and then even people can hold two simultaneous things they can support police and realize that good police need to have this system reformed as well because good police are getting painted with a broad brush for for the fact that there isn't type of accountability that roots out vast policing and when I when I testified at the president's commission a couple of weeks ago and I was on a panel there was four of us on the panel the opening panel and the other three folks were law enforcement they were like you know 30 plus years in the law enforcement business and then and then me and then and what I will say is that you know one of them did not want any type of reform whatsoever the head of the the unions the national police unions you know talked about that basically what needed to happen is actually greater level of latitude for police and the other two folks though and one being a police chief of a of a medium-sized city talked about a set of reforms that will be helpful to him some things that actually do need to happen that if they're put in place at the federal level that would help him and so to the extent that I do think that we are in this moment that is complicated for all of us in this country and it's complicated for local communities I just urge all of us to be able to hold many different things that just because we want to reform policing in this country just because we want to sort of put some account of building a place doesn't mean that we don't support police and it doesn't mean that we can't simultaneously support police it means though it means though that in order for us to be able to move forward in our communities for everyone to feel safe the current system just won't do and that needs to be reformed we'll end it there thank you all for coming let's give an applause for our panelists who are excellent