 Good afternoon and welcome to New America. My name is Lauren Ellen McCann, and I'm a Civic Innovation Fellow at the Open Technology Institute here at New America. New America is a nonpartisan think tank and civic enterprise dedicated to the renewal of American politics, prosperity and purpose in the digital age. And today in a sense we're going to be talking about what it means to prosper in America. Trayvon Martin in 2012, Michael Brown in August 2014, Eric Garner in July, Tamir Rice, 12 years old, February 2015. And besides these names, countless others, unarmed people of color, men and women who have been killed by the police. On and off for months now, since Mr. Brown's death in Ferguson, people around the country and around the world have organized everything from enormous marches and protests to small group meet-ups and potlucks to respond to these losses. And to evaluate how to wield power, how to wield a moment where explicit conversations about power and about race have finally started to slip into the living rooms of the privileged. Should the focus stay on the social message that hashtag Black Lives Matter? Or should the strategy be to paraphrase Reverend Jesse Jackson to move from demonstrations to legislation and litigation? Here on the 50th anniversary of the Salmon marches, I ask you why do we have to choose? And what does it mean to choose? Thanks to the hashtag activism of these past several months in December, President Obama appointed a task force on 21st century policing to identify concrete, innovative and necessary changes and strategies to rebuild public trust, reduce crime and rebuild the relationship between our police forces and the communities they serve. Just two weeks ago on March 2nd, these recommendations were released. The 120 page document calls not for body cams, but for human-centered approaches like better first aid and conflict negotiation training. But with most policing done at the local, not the federal level, what does this report have to do with reality? Are the ideas possible? Practical? They're right ones. Do they advance both policy ends and social needs? Do they share the responsibility for change or do they put undue pressure on local communities? These are the questions we're going to be examining today with our amazing panel during the second event in the New America and Howard University collaborative series for moment-to-movement conversations on race in America. We are joined here by Dr. Greg Carr, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University, Sergeant Delroy Burton, Chairman of the DC Police Union, Board Member of the DC Police Officer Standards and Training Board, and Sergeant with the DC Metro Police Department, Tanya Clayhouse, Director of Public Policy at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and our moderator, Alex Altman, National Correspondent for Time. A couple of quick housekeeping things before we get started. Today's event is being live-streamed. Those are the tiny little robots moving around the room and a recording of the panel will be available on New America website after the event. I think I made that sound more terrifying than it is. They are just there. Not moving very far. And for those of you who are both in the room and watching us online, we'd like to encourage you to continue the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag moment-to-movement and that is the number two. So give it a round for our guests. Thank you for that generous introduction. I'm Alex Altman. I'm a reporter for Time and today my job is essentially to facilitate the discussion, but otherwise keep out of the way of our excellent panel here. And I hope you will all jump in in response to each other's points and just sort of feel free to have a free-ranging conversation. But maybe Tiny will kick it off with you. And I think I will just open with a very general question about what you made of the recommendations contained in the Obama policing task force. I appreciate that. Let me just say, I appreciate the conversation today. It is, in fact, I just got back from a hearing in which we were testifying with the Inter-America Commission on Human Rights specifically about Ferguson and about race in the criminal justice system. So this is a topic that is relevant on a domestic and international level. And I think that it is the President's Task Force on 21st century policing is was a terrific opportunity to really highlight and bring forth a lot of the issues that I think we've been talking about and try to bring forth some recommendations that I think all of us feel are necessary. The Lawyer's Committee has been engaged on race issues and basically in a kind of this form of dealing with civil rights issues for over 50 years. I mean, we were created and founded by former President John F. Kennedy in order to essentially eliminate racial discrimination. So we haven't done that yet. We are continuing to work upon that goal and one of those in that effort, obviously, we've been engaged in dealing with these issues of race and racial disparities in the criminal justice system. In doing so, we, after the killing of Michael Brown and the tragedy there and because of the continued highlighting of killings of unarmed African-Americans, not only just youth, but African-Americans, broadly men and women, which I want to make sure that we emphasize, we brought together a coalition of organizations, national, state, local, organizations, grassroots that would try to bring forth some recommendations and we, in fact, you know, if you're here today, we have those recommendations out there. It's called our Unified Statement for Unified Action and this had a 14-point strategy for long-term change. One of those recommendations includes the creation of a type of oversight committee, something that would, a task force that would provide some recommendations for long-term change. And so in that effort, you know, we were very pleased to see the president create this, this task force. And so I think that it is a step. It is the beginning. We have seen, we are seeing just the tip of the iceberg of what needs to be done. The task force had had a lot of great recommendations, particularly, I think, bringing, you know, highlighting the fact that we are talking about the entire criminal justice system, that this is just not simply about what happened in Ferguson, that this is really indicative of what's happening on a national level, on all levels, and that we've got to look at this as a major disruptive force that needs to be brought in terms of dealing with the implicit bias that exists, particularly within not only in policing, but I think generally in the criminal justice. And so therefore, naturally, if you're talking about implicit bias in the criminal justice system, it's going to affect all areas because it's the person, it's the, it's the structure that we're dealing with. And so I think that was particularly informative of the task force recommendations. There's a lot more that apparently that, you know, that I think that we can get into more, but I will say that I think it was, you know, in addition to highlighting the implicit bias to also acknowledging that we need to deal with the culture of how it is that we're policing in America today to, so that it's not, you know, we talk about protect and serve, but unfortunately, there are those within, you know, there are those that are, are, are, it's a different type of mentality, particularly if you're not engaged with your community and you don't know who it is you're working with on a daily basis. So instead of looking at protecting and serving, it's a culture of looking at as a threat or trying to make sure you're maintaining order and not so much as protecting and serving that community. And then thirdly, I want to emphasize that I think it was very important to talk about, you know, how it is that we need to deal with the information gathering to get all that information, that transparency, so that we actually know what's happening. Because right now, we just don't have that information. So there's a lot of great recommendations. There's some that are missing. We can talk about later. But I think that it was a great start, I'll say. And I think there's a lot more to be done. Well, as a, as a policeman, I hear those things all the time. But this is what I know is that this is a resource problem in part as you talk about the information gathering piece. As most of you are aware, police departments in the United States and there are thousands of them, about 18,000. Most of them are 50 police officers and smaller. So the kind of recommendations that are contained in the in the task forces document, most of those agencies are not going to be able to do, they simply don't have the resources to do it. So if the if the federal government, and as we also know, because of the separation of powers between states and the federal government, and then as you go deeper into the breakup of the state with the county and the local municipal government, people will or those those particular government entities aren't always in concert, and they push back against interference. You know, I think the state of New Jersey comes to mind with just the number of municipal governments that are in that state. In terms of the recommendations themselves, one of the things that I thought the task force and it's a decent document, but I thought they rushed and that they didn't deal with very well. They use the phrase that police agencies, and then they say law enforcement, then they go back to the criminal justice system, they kind of intermingled the two. I don't I didn't like that. But one of the recommendations was that police departments in law enforcement need to go back and acknowledge past misconduct or racial misconduct. And I think that's putting the blame on on the police for what is essentially a national problem for us. You know, racism has been with America since America's founding. Racism was systemic. It was protected by by legislation. It was you couldn't get good, you couldn't get service, you couldn't get equal protection on the law as the Constitution guarantees. So to go back and put it on policing to correct what has essentially been a problem with the United States since its founding, I think they missed the opportunity to say, you know what, as a nation, in every aspect of government, we failed to protect the rights of the minority, even though that's our ideal. And so we, the United States government, state governments, county governments and municipalities need to acknowledge their wrongdoing. So as a whole, we all need to acknowledge the wrongdoing. The other part, it, it talks about procedural justice and being able to communicate with the community you serve and interact in a different way with the community that we serve. I don't necessarily disagree with that. But we talked about implicit bias. Well, bias is a two way street. You know, one of the things if you look at the most recent shooting in Los Angeles on the Skid Row shooting, we talked about diversity, some people think, well, if it's a black police officer involved, you'll get a different response from the community. Not necessarily. The trust issue that they talk about and regaining is a problem, again, going back to the founding of the country. So if for hundreds of years, you were slaves, and then after Emancipation Proclamation, you were free for a little while, then domestic terrorism kicked in with the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow, all of that. So the black community's perception of government, police in particular, is informed by that experience. So in order for the black community to trust the outcome, they have to view it through a different lens. We can't, if we always view it through that lens, we will never trust the police to do anything because we'll just say here, they go again. Is it a good start? I think it's a decent start. I think a part of the problem, though, is people can't be honest or afraid, they are afraid to be honest about how they feel about race. One of the things that we need facts, and we need to look at facts objectively, one of the things during the introduction that I always take exception to is that Trayvon Martin was killed by a policeman. He was not. Had the police gotten on the scene before Zimmerman, I believe Trayvon Martin would be alive. So yes, Trayvon Martin's name helped to bring the conversation about race. But please, don't mix that in with the other also involved shootings. The also involved shooting in Ferguson, investigated by the federal government, investigated at the local level. That police also was cleared. I understand the communities angst about that stuff. But we have to be very, very careful. And I believe conversations like these is what are that need to take place is the form in which we will get those ideas out. You know, one of the things I said when I was at Brookings is that I've seen a lot of demagoguery on both sides. And if we do that and talk past one another and never listen to the other person's perspective, we'll be back here in about a year or two when the next incident happens. Well, I'm first of all, thanks for new American for inviting us. And I'm glad to be part of this conversation. And I'm certainly glad that Sergeant Burton said what needed to be said. So I don't have to say it. I think that report missed another opportunity. I think when historians look back at the Obama administration, W. B. Du Bois wrote something in 1897, 1896. And first, his first book, the suppression of the African slave trade to the United States, he said, until this country deals with the fundamental flaws that were basically baked into the polity, it will continue to have to revisit those flaws. Nobody would have looked on with more horror at the Civil War than the founding fathers. But in fact, it was inevitable. Because structurally, this is, you know, this is the challenge that we have. I think, unfortunately, the Obama administration has missed again, because it won't be honest. And that's not the single out the president. He's just current president. There hasn't been much honesty. In fact, the report mentions a 1967 attempt to begin to address these kind of things. So I appreciate that, Sergeant Burton, for you saying that. Certainly George Zimmerman wasn't the police, but he was, in fact, in his mind anyway, law enforcement, meaning what? There's law and order, and I'm out here to help try to enforce it. A generation ago it was Bernard Getz. Now it's George Zimmerman. But simply put, you have the idea that black folks, anti-citizens, beginning with black folks and then others, have to be policed, have to be surveilled. You know, the United States of America is a concept. Of those 18,000 or so police jurisdictions, as you say, most of them 50 police are under, but roughly half of them are 10 people or less. And I don't know that necessarily the police into Louisiana look like the police in Los Angeles, California. I think there are different relationships based on who the people are, what the culture is of the space, and how that culture emerges. And I think what we see in that report is a very clear evasion of the fundamental problem we have, one of the fundamental problems we have in this country, which is we don't have a country as a concept. We have people of African descent who, you're absolutely right, learn to respect the law for its ability to punish, not for any relationship to justice. And we have a civil war that emerged with the civil, with civil war amendments, 13, 14, and 15, and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which may have, may still be the most forceful federal statute that's ever been put on the books. It hadn't been used a whole lot. But then you have to have a second reconstruction 100 years later. We're in this anniversary of 50th. But you know, black lives matter. But in this country, black death matters more. Civil Rights Act of 1964 comes after the Birmingham movement, the killings in Birmingham comes after a season of blood. The Voting Rights Act comes after a bloody Sunday in Selma. And the last of those three, 1968, the Civil Rights Act 1968 comes after the assassination of Martin Luther King. It seems that in this country, the only thing that moves this country to act, and that's at a federal level, is the sacrifice of black folks. And you know, quite frankly, kind of sum it up when we get into conversation, I think, what the report really reveals is the powerlessness of the federal government to do anything really that can intervene in the lives of black folks. Because the first recommendation they say is to set up a permanent panel. Well, I suppose I need a permanent panel in the middle of the night when the police have pulled you over. They needed somebody to intervene on their behalf. And I suspect that depending on where they are in this country, what their relationship is with their local police officers, if it's a small town in Alabama where the cops are black and they're black or the cops are white and they're black, but they know those police differently. Maybe it turns out differently than New York City of Philadelphia. Maybe it doesn't. But the point is that we're trying to address a structural problem. And as the report says, organizational culture trumps policy every time. But we're talking about the organizational culture of the state itself. And that's the thing that is missing from that report. Also, is it an exercise in futility then? Is there anything that it can sort of spur local police departments or the federal government to do as a result? Well, I think it's going to spur action. You've seen some activity already. I think one of the things that was troubling about Ferguson on a personal level for me, I've heard people try to compare Selma in 1965 to what's going on in Ferguson now. I think it's a false comparison because in 1965, black people were trying to get access to the political system. In Ferguson, they were 67% from, I might be incorrect about the percentage of population. They should have controlled politically what was going on in Ferguson. And that's a demonstration of what's going on in America in general. There's political apathy. And now, unfortunately, it took a death to spur interest in the political process. Where the power is, is in the political process. And so those communities that want to have good relationships with the police, they need to exercise their political power to be able to shape who makes the decisions about who's in charge of the police department, what they want the police department to do. The other thing is that a lot of the focus in the report is in what policing needs to do and change. And policing has evolved significantly in the United States over the last 50 years. I think even though there's a lot of improvement that still can be made, it's probably never been better than it is right now in terms of the level of training, the quality of the people that we're hiring. That doesn't mean it cannot improve. But changes need to happen on the other side too. It's not just police officers that need it to change. Because police officers are out of the community. We come from within the community. So when we talk about implicit bias, there's implicit bias in every community and there's bias against police officers. So it's a two-way street. And we as a country need to deal with the fact that every ill that we can point a finger at at a police officer, the three-fingers pointing back at you to tell you that you as the individual citizen need to deal with your implicit bias and the way you view things. We can become cynical as police officers. This is an example I use all the time. We deal with bad, when you deal with juveniles, you tend to think, God, these young kids in this generation are bad. The reality is, I'm just dealing with the bad kids. Most kids are good. When I work in bad communities, most where high crime communities, high drug and low employment, most of the people in those communities are good. I continue to deal with the same 10, 5% of the population that's causing problems all the time. So I could become cynical and think, well, you know, this whole population is bad. No, they're not. They're just in a bad circumstance. And that's not something the police can affect. Unfortunately, a lot of these issues get pushed down to a guy who we ask or a girl who we ask to go out and enforce the law. And these are social problems that require other interventions other than law enforcement. I don't disagree that this is a larger problem. That's actually what I was emphasizing that when I talked, when I spoke about the reports highlighting of the implicit bias that exists in the criminal justice system, I characterize that as, you know, I tried to put that in context and saying that, you know, we're talking about implicit bias and criminal justice, which incorporates when we're talking about policing as well. It is a function of how it is that we are dealing with race in this country. Now, that being said, that doesn't mean that we don't need to deal with the result and the consequences that exist within the police culture. So I, while I agree that we have to deal with the bias on all ends, we can't deny that we can't, we, we have to deal with it with what we see right now. So, you know, I, I, I appreciate the, the need to make sure that we are not, we are not trying to, that we are not characterizing all police as, as hostile and as, as that they are not doing their job. And in fact, I think that it's furthest from the truth. In fact, I think what we're trying to, what we're trying to highlight is to say that this is a function, what we're seeing right now, what is happening, that the highlighting of a lot of these tragic killings is a function of what we're dealing with in the larger society. But we've got to deal with it. And so we've got to deal with the training. We've got to deal with how it is that people are being perceived in their communities. And yes, even though we're talking about that there is a different sensitivity when it comes to people of color, particularly African American, when you're talking about police, you're right. It's the result of the history that has existed in this country, the racism, the structural institutional racism that we've had, the oppression that has developed throughout the years. That's a natural inclination. If you've got an oppressed people, you're taught you're going to be dealing, you're going to have a certain bias against those structures that have been oppressing you for years. That being said, we are a structure of people. We're people. So we're individuals. So each of us has to deal with our individual bias. And so that means that it's not just we got to deal with the bias of not only the communities, but the biases that individuals within the policing force also have that then result in some of the problems that we're talking about. So I think, so I, I don't disagree, actually, with a lot of what you're saying, but I don't want to, I don't want to us to ignore the fact that we are dealing with individuals that have biases on all ends, and that we've got to actually incorporate trainings, we've got to deal with how it is that we are training our people that we know have biases that may have that because they're always seeing that few that percentage of bad actors, that therefore they're categorizing the entire community in this bad light, that's a bias, though, that we've got to deal with. And I think that that is something that is creating such a structure right now we have this continual. We have such a vast, you know, distrust, unfortunately, of right now of many communities of color against police because they feel that there is the stereotype that is being perpetuated within the entire culture. So I think there's a lot of agreement here, but I think that we've got to make sure that we're not ignoring the reality that we've got to deal individually. We can't just simply say that it's not, it's not this, it's not that it's it's all together that we have to deal with. That's right. And as you say, it's structural. I wouldn't single out the police, except that in that case, and I was glad to see that Jennifer Everhart testified the first and second week of January, who's done some work on this question of implicit bias, when they have implicit bias when you don't have a gun, or the option to use a gun or a taser. And when you look at the recommendations and they talk about, you know, use of a non leak, non lethal ways to subdue folks, I'm thinking, you know, in that split second, what have you been socialized to believe about that person? And the decision you make could end up with this person being dead. Now, sure, maybe you'll go to jail, maybe you won't as we know, particularly with the report in Ferguson that was issued by the Justice Department. It's the Rights Act 1964. The intent standard is so high that no policeman is going to jail or very few police will be going to jail for exercising their judgment in a split second. You know, one of the questions I might ask is what exactly did the police do wrong? Or do the police do wrong in a state polity where that is their function? I mean, even the language of the report, police should be reorient themselves around this notion of being guardians. Guardians? Police are not soldiers. Of course, they're soldiers. If you're looking at yourself as protecting something from something else and talking about the police presence task force report or the DOJ's report. I'm talking about the president's task force at this point. Yes, I was just I was mentioning the DOJ's report because, you know, there's an attempt to reform, but ultimately reform is not what we need. We need a paradigm shift in how we're having this conversation. Yeah. Well, I mean, the Guardian versus the soldier analogy, I hear that one all the time in the quote unquote militarization of policing. Militarization had nothing to do with Ferguson. Not a lot of people didn't like the equipment they use after the rioting started, but the militarization didn't cause the riot. A quote unquote militarization. I think when we I think we run the risk of alienating further the police officers and the community when we start describing them as soldiers, as occupiers, because in a community that is a high crime community that need police services the most that you take a look at this this this false choice. If I pull back on the on the amount of policing I'm doing in that community, then I'm not providing good service. If I put a lot of resources in that community, then I'm over policing. I'm not sure where the balance is. The number of officers in there that trying to keep the shootings down, the robberies, whatever it is. So there's a difference, though, between providing the service and harassment, which I think a lot of people don't necessarily see the distinction. For example, what happened in, you know, after the killing of Eric Garner and a lot of the unrest that erupted in New York, you know, you had the police unions there who essentially declared, well, you know what? We're going to pull back and we're not going to police. We didn't have an interruption of an additional police, you know, additional crime and criminal activity that came as a result of them pulling back. So I think that I hear what you're saying, but I think that there has got to be an understanding of exactly what the question is. What do you mean by additional policing versus just having an, you know, versus having the presence? These are political decisions. And unfortunately, at the end of that political decision, you see the police. And the administration in New York that, and I'm not giving an opinion one way or the other, but in terms of the stop and frisk policy that they had, that was not a policy that was instituted by the police department. That was something that was political. The end result was you saw the police more aggressively enforcing every minor rule. Well, that's what the political establishment wanted. Okay, so the police then bear the brunt of going out here interacting with people every day, particularly in places where they need to be the most because of the high levels of crime or whatever the disorder issue is that needs to be dealt with. And as the one thing that's correct in the report is that the enforcement then people chafe at the enforcement, even though you're knocking down certain types of crime, people feel like they're being harassed. And no police also goes out with the intent of going out and harassing someone. And contrary to popular belief, we get punished for things in policing or in the NPD. All of my experiences with the Metropolitan Police Department is one of the five largest police departments in the United States. So all the policies and the things they talk about in the report we already have and we already do. For example, it talks about language and how language can be inflammatory and take a situation from you and I having the discussion to being inflammatory depending on what I say. Well, we teach something called verbal judo and it's standard. When I interact with you, for example, on a traffic stop, the first thing I'll do is introduce myself and I will tell you. But that's what's supposed to happen. But here's the part that most people never see is that you get disciplined for things in my profession that the average person would never get disciplined. If I curse at you, I get disciplined for that. How about if you say you guys may pick you up because you're going to jail tonight before you ever ask for license of registration and that's my experience, brother. I can't say anything. Exactly, you can't. I can't ask you that question and you can't give me that. That's right. That's the only answer you can give. Because if that is what happened, let me take your word and say that's what happened. That would be an inappropriate interaction. So you would agree. That interaction because it tends to escalate situations. Sure. Unnecessarily. And as a union man, and you know, my father, I mean, we union family. Right. So I respect that. You have to intervene on behalf of that police officer before he gets disciplined or if he's going to be disciplined, if for no other reason, then you have to protect his rights. Absolutely. And that's that's the union's job is to protect the due process, right? Not to stop someone from being disciplined or to prevent management from exercising their responsibilities run the union. Our job is to protect the due process rights, because when you become a police officer, you don't lose your due process rights. And a lot of times when police officers are accused of misconduct, everybody wants to or not everyone. Some people, some people want to lock their heads off right away. He's a copy. He shouldn't have done that. Well, let the process work. And, you know, we fire in our agency and I can't speak to other agencies. Okay, we fire a lot of people. Sure. And we discipline a lot of people in 3045, the most severe penalty other than termination that I just saw was a 70 day suspension without pay. So they are very harsh with us for things that if you and I are neighbors, and let's say your dog takes a you know, use the bathroom, want my lawn and we get into a heated argument about it. And I just berate you. And you call the police department. I've been a lot of trouble, because we can be disciplined for our undue to related conduct and our off due to related conduct. And I think that what is instructive here is that there's a reason that you're held to a higher standard, because you have that authority, you have that super, you know, that is something that is different for when you're talking about simply a colleague having a very animated conversation at work. If you're at a so you're talking about two colleagues who are not who are at the same level. No, there's no superb supervisory authority over one or the other, then you're not going to have the same type of interaction or same type of, I think, control over different individuals as you would someone who actually has an authority. So you're talking about a typical, I think, you know, employment, employment interaction. And I think that that's it's necessary to have a higher standard for police. If you're carrying a gun, and you actually have an ability to enact some type of authority and control over an individual, then you'd need to have that higher standard. And I don't have a problem with that. What I think we need to deal with is that there does become there's a line that unfortunately gets crossed too many times. And because people, you know, for example, you talked about your interactions with police officers, some police officers, you know, I've had my own. I mean, I we all have had differing varying accounts. And, you know, and let's just put this to the side. I have a my father in law, my stepfather is a sheriff. Okay, so let's just be clear. I don't have a, you know, a negative reaction automatically. But I will say that I have been pulled over simply because I was driving a sports car. I had a cap on. And I'm sure I did not look like I was a young, you know, female. But for some reason, I was pulled over in the middle of the night. And I'm like, and when I jumped out with my University of Michigan shirt on, and all of a sudden I was like, Oh, okay, so I'm you know, sorry, you're just you're fine. He's like, you just had, you know, we just saw you pull out with, you know, lights on or something like that. I was like, I just came out of the gas station. I was about I can't speak to the stop, but I will I will give you some advice about jumping out of the car that that is no, I didn't jump out immediately. I would never have done that. I'm a little bit more because that because that when we talk about reaction, police officers are almost always reacting to what somebody else does were always behind the eight ball. So if you jump out of the car and the police officer reacts, I know what I would have done. If because it happened to me once. I don't I don't know what your intentions are. I don't know who you are and I don't know what you've done. So I have to react offensively at that point. Right. But I don't want to derail the conversation on that because that but I do want to I do want to say this for the you know that the point is the point that I was getting to is that I think that you've got to there is a reason that we do have a higher standard for our police officers, just like we have a higher standard for anybody who has that that authority or control over another individual, especially if you can automatically base upon your one on one interaction, you can throw somebody in jail and then you've got to prove after the fact that you were not in the wrong. So that's why a lot of you know, the recommendations that are with getting back to the task force that we are that there are things in there that call for a better use of technology. I appreciate those agencies that are utilizing, you know, body worn cameras or dash cameras or other technology that provides that transparency. And so that all are protected, that it's not simply the individual but also the police officers that you can have that due process. And if anything, I would look forward to actually being able to hold up those agencies that have model practices. So what you're talking about, I would love to be able to get my hands on certain information to say, you know what, this is what we're looking for. Now this is the type of thing this is the type of engagement that we'd like to actually promote. Furthermore, I'd actually ask you if you talk, you know, if we're trying to change this entire culture, don't you think it's also important to make sure that we have this community relationship so that, so if we're either through a community oversight or some type of a required engagement with the community so that there is this so that so you can eliminate those types of that bias and those types of barriers that many have against police force. We would love to do that. Here's the question though, for all police communities, not just here in Washington, DC, how do you bridge that high level of distrust, particularly in the black community, based on historical conduct? In the report, for example. Some very good testimony, good oral testimony. I haven't read the transcripts of everything. I caught a few of them on C-span, but I saw Charles Ogletree who was there, my friend, Sheryl and I, the defense plan. I actually want historian, however, even in the recommendations, the six pillars, the recommendation on education, particularly providing more education for police officers and I'm, who could be against long forgiveness for police officers to continue their education? I'm for that. I mean, absolutely. Keep going. I still didn't see anything specific to deal with the question of history in this country. Everything was oriented around bias. Everything was oriented around, and that's almost like colorblind constitutionalism. Well, discrimination is discrimination. You're discriminating against me, I'm discriminating against you. No, no, no, no. This is not a zero sum game. There's historical context for this. They ducked the issue. Absolutely ducked it. Completely avoided the issue. And what they said about it, I thought, you know, they did the whole report of disservice because the key to all of this is the historical context. It's not simply police officers are out here, going out here to brutalize the citizens that we swear to protect. I'm one of those citizens. You know, my wife and my children can't drive down the street to go conduct any business if the police officers where I live don't do their work. And didn't address race within the culture of policing. I mean, it's very disappointing on any number of levels. So, you know, let me and I'm sure you probably have some other questions you want to ask us, but I think that it is. We need to recognize also the context in which we were dealing with this task force. Let's just be honest. Please. This task force was pulled together within probably two weeks and they had approximately six weeks to hear testimony across the country and develop recommendations and get a report out to the president on March. Was it second? That and it was just kind of a whirlwind tour that they conducted. There is no way that they possibly could have gotten to everything that needed to be gotten to within this report. So to be fair, OK, well, to be fair, I just want to say that for the record. I don't think that there's any way they could have gotten to that. And to also to be fair, I think that they had a they had a mandate. There was an executive order that the president gave. All right. That executive order didn't say to address the entire culture of history of racism in this country. It didn't. But it didn't say not to. It didn't say not to. The preamble it's alluded to, which means they were aware of it. I agree. Yeah. I'm just saying that I think that we need to take it upon ourselves to force that conversation and that you're right. This administration is not going to get to everything that we need it to get to. It hasn't yet. And it's not going to. I don't think any administration will deal with these issues of race unless we force them to. That's right. And so I'm glad we're having the conversation. But I don't think that we can. I think that we need to take from what we take what we can from this report and then push it further. Because I just I don't think that there was really an opportunity to get to everything that needed to get to gotten to. But I'm not my words are all off. But what I do agree that the history, the structure of racism in this country is that what has created this this this this problem that we have this in our society, particularly not only in policing, criminal justice in our economy and so much that we have right now. That's right. What what sorts of two. And I agree with what you said. As you know, we can't expect sort of a a slapdash report. And that's not in sort of insulting the court, but report compiled in such a short frame of time that tackle such weighty and deeply ingrained issues to obviously fix everything but or anything at all really. But what tools does the federal government have to try to encourage or incentivize a rebuilding of trust between police and communities, you know, be it through legislation or through grants. Not a rebuilding of trust. There was never any trust. That's probably. Well, I think it requires, like I said earlier, it requires action on the part of the community. It requires action on the part of the police. What the federal government has. Resources, well, a lot of these small agencies don't have it. They don't have the same level of training that we receive and those communities simply can't afford to pay for it. I mean, in times of crisis, we were just talking about this. We have a staffing crisis coming up. We have 1100 officers that can leave in the next two years because we hired 1500 people in a two year span and they didn't plan for this. And now we can't hire as fast as we're losing people. This was during the Clinton administration? No, this was in 1989. In about 25 years ago. So now we have this problem and now we need to replace people at a very, very fast clip. And doing it at a fast clip is never good for policing. So, you know, the federal government has resources. Unfortunately, politically and structurally, we can't have a national police force. It will never pass political muster. But one of the things, one of the recommendations in there is to set standards and with the help of the federal government to fund their funding ability, we can train all police officers in a very, very similar standard. I know in state police agencies, large city and county police agencies, that level of training and funding is already there. But I think the problem manifests itself in all policing in terms of the things we've been discussing. But it really, really gets bad the smaller the agency gets. And I agree with that completely. I think one of the recommendations that we provided, not only in the unified statement, but the Lawyers Committee also provided testimony at the task forces to incentivize the grants that are going to the law enforcement agencies so that you do not, you can have some type of standard, a uniform standard of training, of resource allocation that you can have uniform standards in place. And I think that that is something that I think can be done. The federal government is very adept at doing that. They are very, exactly. Race to the top in many other ways. And so, and this can be done even through resource allocation of the various resources, all types of resources that police agencies are getting. But how does that work? I mean, if you don't have sort of a national oversight board that is in charge of making decisions, but measuring how well different departments are performing, how do they sort of... That's difficult because I think to create metrics obviously would be one size fits all. But Ralph Bunt said something a half century ago that still brings true to me today. The Negro, at the time of course, saying Negro or African-American is a special ward of the federal government. Meaning that the question of oversight, federal oversight is really what has triggered any progress in this country. So if you're trying to have oversight of something like how well police officers are trained, it seems to me, and the report speaks to this, that there can be national oversight, but it has to be informed by local reality. In other words, you have to have a loose oversight that really empowers localities to really emerge in that way. Maybe the citizen review boards made a really... It can be done. I mean, we've called for a national oversight. And in fact, as you alluded to previous task forces that were convened, they've called for the same thing. So it's not as if this is not a novel concept. I think many of us agree that there needs to be this national oversight. Now, right now what we're doing is we're just kind of doing this ad hoc type of oversight. We've got various entities within the Department of Justice. You've got the administration in its own capacities. You've got entities obviously within Homeland Security. Everybody's exercising their various different levels of oversight, whether it be through dealing with the local law enforcement in the distribution of grants through COPS program and through the burn jab grants that are given to police forces or through Homeland Security. They're dealing with immigration and dealing with oversight and dealing with enforcement of the immigration laws. And so you've got a lot of different oversight that is happening there as well. I think that we just had the release of the guidance for federal agencies on the use of race. So racial profiling guidance that was released. But unfortunately, it only covers federal agencies. And it does not, in specific federal agencies, within the Department of Justice jurisdiction, it does not cover Homeland Security. So you're not covering a lot of the ICE agents that are out there and engaging in enforcement dealing with immigrants, which is a huge issue, that we have a different overlap because now we're getting beyond just African-Americans. We're dealing with people of color generally. And so you have that guidance that's been released. You have, as I said, other agencies that are distributing grants. And so they have different levels of oversight and accountability that they're engaged in. But it's ad hoc. And so we need that overall effort. And I think that that can be done, but it has to be, I think this is a start, but we've got to actually force that creation of that type of oversight committee. That's a structural problem, again, that's political. I agree. You will never get that because you'll be infringing constitutionally on the state's rights to do most of these things. I hope it's political. I hope it's political in that. And the other part of it that the report touched on it briefly, but they didn't go into great detail. The education in this country about how police operate and why we do what we do and how we do it, it's unfortunately mostly done through TV and bad TV at that. So people get a lot of misinformation about what is going on in policing. Or experience for those who have contact with the police. Some people, I think most people's interaction with the police because there are millions and millions of interactions with police officers on a daily basis. The only time we talk about them is if something goes horribly wrong. I don't disagree, but I'm saying we agree. So the vast majority of police officers are doing a very good job, given what we ask them to do and how we train them. But in terms of education, in terms of education, both sides of the coin need some additional education because most people don't understand what the police officers are doing. They don't have any idea why they do some of the stuff they do. And you get overwhelmed with the reporting when it's a bad situation, where someone is killed or where a police officer is accused of some type of misconduct. And that's just the nature of the way things operate. But even the incidents that wouldn't be reported. I mean, the idea that for many people in this society, I mean, we talk about the talk, so to speak, that black men have with their sons, but I would say black women have with their girls. Black women have with their sons. I've got two sons that I have. Or with their daughters. Everybody should have that talk about interacting with police officers. It's not just limited to black, white, brown. In this respect, I think it is circumscribed by the people of color who are not white, because white's a color too. But the idea that your job when you have an encounter with the police is to survive. That's what a lot of young people, non-whites here, your job is to survive. That's certainly what I was told. And when you get stopped, your job is to survive. Now, in terms of police training, I don't think it's unusual for people to be aware of the fact that a police officer's job in a moment of encounter is to control the situation, right? Whether it be controlled through use of language, through body language, through procedure, but ultimately to control that situation. Let me say from touching upon that there, I'm also a member of the National Bar Association. And the National Bar has been engaged in trainings in town halls. Oh, absolutely. I've been with youth across the country and having these to teach them how to interact and engage with law enforcement. And you're exactly right. The main message is you need to survive. No, I think- Let me just- Let me just- We're told that. Let me tell you. She's right. Let me just tell you. The main message is that you need to survive that encounter and we will deal afterwards 24 hours later with whether or not what happened to you was legal, whether or not due process was followed and we can deal with that after the fact. But we do not want you to have an engagement in which we end up having to deal with another Michael Brown or another Tamir Rice because we can't do anything after that fact. You're dead. And so that is unfortunately, the message that many feel has to be given right now and whether or not you agree that whether or not we are talking about all, we're obviously not talking about all law enforcement, but unfortunately there are those interactions that many youth of color are engaged in in which this is the main message that they have to hear because otherwise there's gonna be an interaction that is going to erupt in a situation in which they feel they're not gonna see the tomorrow and to deal with whether or not due process was followed. And that's good advice for everybody, not just people of color. And we keep reference in Michael Brown. Michael Brown attacked that policeman. The Justice Department investigated it. The state investigated it. You can snicker. No, no, no, no, I'm not snickering because let's just say he's on the absolute wrong. What has that got to do with what you just heard? Because the action of the person on the scene dictates the reaction of the police officer to you. Yes, but Tamir Rice is 12 years old, was killed within the span of four seconds after being, because he had a play gun now. The police officer didn't know that. I understand that the police officer may have thought they didn't know, but let's just be clear about the training that was engaged in that incident. Whether or not that police officer from my understanding also did not listen to the caller to the police dispatch. The 911 dispatcher did not put out the information that she received that this may be a toy to the officer in the field. So the officer in the field arriving, thinking he's coming to a man with a gun, not that the gun may have been a toy. And so you just said a man with a gun, a man with a gun, and this is a man with a gun, 12 years old, and this is how we get back again to survival, that you can't survive when you have an automatic bias that a young child is going to be presumed to be a threat, an adult threat to that police officer, regardless of how old you are, regardless of what the reality is. And so the fact of the matter is that you're right. We all have to have different conversations, but youth of color, people of color unfortunately have, we have to have that conversation with our young children, particularly if they're tall. I've got a tall five-year-old who looks like he's a seven or eight-year-old right now, and I understand that I'm gonna have to have a conversation with him probably in the year or so, because he's gonna be looking like he's a teenager walking around, he's kindergarten right now. The reason I asked you yet, because one of the recommendations, right, the police is talking about the surveillance in the school. Well, that's already happened. So my point is that this is the engagement that we're dealing with, this is the reality. And so I respect the fact that we are wanting to ensure that many, the majority of police officers are trying to do the right thing. They're trying to do their job and actually protect and serve. But we also are still dealing with the reality that those that are, particularly if we look at the DOJ's report in Ferguson, you had not, I think it was 87 or 95% of the incident use of force was against African-Americans. All the uses of force by attack dogs was against African-Americans. That you had 87% of those incidents that police engagements or shootings against African-Americans, yet they're only 67% of the population. So that's the reality that we're dealing with. There's a sort of another component. But we also are 13% of the population and we're involved in 57% of the homicides in this country. So if you wanna throw numbers around, what about those numbers? The fact of the matter is, the political structure in Ferguson, the people who had the power to change what was going on at the Ferguson City Council and the Ferguson City Hall didn't use it. And whether or not the DOJ report says there was biased. If you're 67% of the population and you get cited for 87% of whatever the issue is, statistically, because you're such a large part of the population, I don't see that as an outlier. But that's just me. We're about 16,000 people in Ferguson and 21,000 open wars. Come on, man. Okay, just a moment. I'll answer your question. Yes, please. That is a structural political problem. The police also did not set up that court system that allows for individuals to have warrants if they don't pay citation. So the mandate is stop somebody from J-Walking? No, no, that's not the mandate. The mandate is if you get in the structure that they had, and the District of Columbia used to have a similar structure and we moved to an administrative process for tickets. We don't cite people other than criminal traffic matters. You're not going to criminal court. So if you run a red light or you have a seatbelt ticket, it's all administrative. Apparently, in Ferguson, it was not. And if you didn't pay that ticket, it turns into a warrant. How is the police responsible for that? They didn't establish that structure. And the DOJ report didn't say that that was a police issue. They said that was a municipal court issue. That entire system. The criminal court system was set up in order to benefit on the backs of X-Fact. The police called the grunt of everything that's wrong. They're yearly budgets. But it's all, I mean, it was all, it was a debtor's prison that was created in Ferguson that we're dealing with. And that's why quotas are bad. And that's why quotas are illegal. Because it gives the wrong incentive for enforcement action. But again, we go to what created that structure. The police department didn't do it. The political leadership in Ferguson did that. How prevalent is that structure of small cities or municipalities relying on fines generated by stopping. Large cities, small cities? I mean, the meters in this city, Washington, DC, are at different price, depending on different places where you are in the city. I mean, so, absolutely. But I think what's really at the root of your question is that we don't have that information to know. I mean, the only reason we know what happened in Ferguson is because there is an investigation that was conducted by the Department of Justice after we're killing an unarmed black man. We don't have those investigations happening across the country. And so, and right now, getting back to the fact that we don't have the data that comes in because we don't have a uniform methodology of collecting that information. We don't have that tool right now. We're not gonna know that information. And so that's another recommendation we're calling. Like, we need that information so that we can figure it out. The uniformity that you're talking about in reporting. For example, if you look at the FBI's UCR, the Uniform Crime Reporting System that they have. Well, it's not just uniformity. It's actually a requirement. You know, it's not voluntary right now. It's voluntary. The only way you get compliance, and look at what happened with the ACA. Okay, again, this is political. Look at what happened with the ACA. You tell me that, for, let's say, a Democratic president in Congress enacts requirements that you report. And a state says, well, I don't want to because I disagree with you politically. It becomes a political football and none of that information gets put forward. Everybody agrees that we need to collect as much data as possible to make sure that we're making the right decisions about what direction to move in. The issue is going to be, how do you gain compliance? Now, in- And that's what I talk about incentivizing a lot of the grants that are going to the agencies in order to incentivize that- But if it's a five-man police department or a 10-man police department that's not receiving any federal grants, how do you get that data? You're right. I mean, I think we've got to have a real discussion about how it is you require that information to be sent to be provided. And as a matter of public policy, I think that we really do have to see a level of social engagement, civic engagement, particularly in terms of electoral politics that pushes this envelope. And the other reason I said it is because one of the things that the report talks about is engaging in more partnerships with private capital, private industry. I'm a little wary of that. I mean, on the front page of today's New York Times, there's a county in California that just asked to spend half a million dollars on this stingray surveillance stuff for cell phones. And one of the things that they have to be cleared from, cleared by, is a private capital. It's the company that makes this thing. Now, this is surveillance technology where they can list, they say, well, we're just listed to the cell phones of those who we're trying to pick up. But the equipment serves as a cell phone tower. They are picking up everything. So I guess what I'm saying is that the only way that you intervene in issues like that or issues like this is that have the people have to intervene. The electoral politics, but it's pushed, as you said, finally, it's pushed by protest. Because we wouldn't be sitting here had not those people gotten the streets. And I wanna get back to that issue that you've also raised about the political power that needs to be exercised. I agree. I think that many of us who were assessing the situation in Ferguson and many other areas agree. That was one of the first things that come to light, that there has not been that engagement in the democratic process. So that you've created this structure in which you do have those that are an authority that don't look anything like the community, who do not have an interest in the community and therefore are, you know, and so that is the structure. However, that being said, well, I totally agree that we need to correct that process. That does not justify and eliminate the responsibility of those in authority to act justly. That's right. Okay, so I agree that we've got to deal with the lack of political power, but that does not justify and excuse those that are currently in power from engaging in this discriminatory behavior that they engaged in throughout the years in Ferguson. So I don't want to excuse that behavior while at the same time saying we need to take responsibility for the actions that people are not exercising, for example, going to vote. Can I ask you as a lawyer? Because I mean, I teach a class at Howard Law School and we go through every major dimension of the law and the way that the law has attempted to address that in this country. How do you imagine the law intervening in these spaces? Particularly when you look at the intense standard, for example, I mean, what happened in Ferguson or what happened in Florida? What happened in any of these cases that we're talking about, to me or Rice-John Crawford, you know, can the Department of Justice do much more than what it did in the case? They actually need to change. I mean, even Attorney General Holder has noted that there actually needs to be, he thinks there needs to be, we need to revisit the standard. We need to change the standard by what's better, by what's better. And it's not just baked into the Civil Rights Act of 64. It's really the courts. Because I mean, it's almost like the courts inverted or raised that standard, elevated that standard, that intent burden that you see coming out of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The stuff they used in US versus price, you know, the so-called Mississippi burnings case. I mean, in the egregious examples, the court finds the courage somehow to say, these police need to go to jail because what they did was, in fact, state action. But in case after case, when people say, we're gonna get justice, we're gonna get justice, I know as a lawyer, you must sit there and say, my God, I wish these people understood that that intent burden has been raised so high that they're not going to get anything. It's an evolution throughout the courts, just throughout the years. And I think that we're not, I think we, I'll say that many of us that were watching this and knew that the Department of Justice was conducting these investigations. We were saddened, but not surprised. Okay, so I think we had much more belief that there should be what happened with the investigation over the pattern of practices of the Department. But with regard to the claims, the federal civil rights claims against Officer Darren Wilson, I think we all knew, we all knew that there was a high standard, there was a high burden and that that, you know, it was likely it was not gonna be that. I think that's how it should be when you ask someone to go out here and make a decision in a split second that you have the luxury to sit back and dissect for 10 years while they're facing danger. That is why that standard is high. And if we start tinkering with that standard, simply because we don't like the outcome in this one case, who are you going to get to do these very difficult jobs? That's just not true in terms of the history of American jurisprudence. That standard is high because the lives that have been most subject to that threat have not counted in this country. But that's a separate case. I would agree with you in this, and I would say this, police in this country are like teachers. We know we value in this country by what we spend money on. We know what we value in this country by how we help people achieve a standard of excellence. This country is never going to move beyond. It's slow disintegration into this deeply structurally unequal kind of capitalist state. It's never gonna move beyond that until it makes different kinds of investments. Police officers will be well trained, they should be well educated, they should be well compensated. Teachers the same way, but what you see is there's no deep structural commitment to the civic polity. That's what we're talking about. Well, let me just say, just so we have a chance for questions. You guys each wanna- No, we have to get conversation. This is a great conversation. But so that we can have, let the audience sort of weigh in with their questions, if you guys each wanna sort of respond to that. And we can- Go ahead. It's, I don't disagree with you in terms of the training. The history, you can't, the history is history. It's there. We know that structurally America was the three-fifths compromise racist to give power to the Southern states and the Congress. It was done that way for a reason. But the fact of the matter is in terms of training, professionalism and all the things that people talk about that they want the police to do. When it comes down to the actual pocketbook issue of paying for that kind of service, we balk. Right. Okay? I agree with you. We balk at that. So if you want police officers to have a high level of training that everybody, I believe, want, you know, five, three, four years of professional development and the types of things we do with attorneys, we have to pay for it. It's not impossible. I think we all agree with that. But we all have to pay for that. And when you have municipalities, Washington, D.C., the only jurisdiction over the, during the recession who grew its budget didn't pay its police officer, giving them a raise for eight years. So now you have all these people wanting to leave and they can't recruit and replace those people fast enough. Let me just ask you, where will they go? Because I'm assuming many of these folks who retire will be young enough to start a whole second career. They go into private security? Many of them? No. There are different tiers of retirement system for us. There are three actual tiers. So the middle tier, which is the one I belong to, you have to be a minimum of 50 years old and serve 25 years of service to be able to, even years plus time. So I mean, the reason I raise that is because, let's just say, and I know it's, let's just say you started police officers at $100,000 a year. What kind of recruits would you get? You'd probably get very good ones, but your problem there will be, it's not necessarily sustainable. I mean, over all, I mean, the country certainly has the money. We're both laughing because we know it doesn't have the political will. That's just where we want to spend it. Yeah, exactly. Oh, sorry, we have questions. I got two little facts on the question here. One, you know, I welcome the reform talk, but we should all know that we are safer now than we've been since the late 60s, early 70s in terms of crime stats, just throwing that out there. And two, how does any of this discussion relate to some of the underlying issues we have with youth violence? I mean, the second leading cause of death among youth 14 to 25 is homicide. And the number one leading cause for African-American youth 14 to 25 is homicide. And what we know about the stats is that folks are killing themselves within races. So how does any of this perform actually address these underlying issues because it doesn't seem like it does? Well, I mean, the report opens with and then very quickly moves past it. The fact that we're dealing with the question of the economy. We're dealing with the question of education. These are structural issues, as we say. I mean, the police, right. The police are catching the brunt of it at this moment because they're the point of contact. But, and you're right. I mean, violence is intimate. You know, Rudolph Giuliani may talk about black-owned black violence, perhaps he needs to talk about intimate violence because white-on-white violence is the same type of violence. But the question you're raising is the question that the report evokes and then remains mute on, which is the structural problem of the economy. If folks have jobs, if folks are making living wage, if folks are building community, folks are much less likely to stick a pistol or a fist or a knife in somebody else's face. The question, to your question, why is there this persistent underclass or underperformance in the black community? We know there are historical reasons for it. But in my view, there is a perspective problem here. It's how we teach people in poor communities to view what the United States represents as an idea. So if you take a look at immigrants, and I am one, I came here from Jamaica in 1974, the view of the United States is that this is the place of opportunity. You can come from dirt, poor beginnings. And if you get here and you do the right things and you work, you can achieve whatever you want. But persistently, we tell people in depressed communities in the United States that the system is so stacked against them that they will never succeed. That mindset gets ingrained and then they don't succeed. Well, if you've been telling me my entire life that I'm the victim of something, and in some cases, in a lot of cases, they are. But if that's all I tell you is that the system is stacked against you, you can never get ahead, you can never succeed. How are you going to succeed? That's a very good question. John Ogbu, even Oliver Hox in the 40s, will talk about the difference between a caste minority and an immigrant minority. And one of the things that we have in this country is that people of African descent in particular, but as you say, immigrants who come from other places are not looking to this country for their cultural grounding. What you have in this country is a group of people who are a caste minority. And so that type of, and by the way, that's about to change. Because one of the things Report evokes is that we're moving into a plural America. Many of these things may change as the demographics change because you can't continue to keep that type of message going in a society where whites will become just one more minority. So I completely agree with everything was just said here, but I also want to take issue with your statement that currently, that today we are, as you said, the safest in this country that we ever have been. And I guess that depends. Okay, well, I think that is all in relative terms. I think it depends on who you're talking to because we have right now one in every four black men who are in jail and incarcerated right now. We have a problem of over-incarceration in this country. So if you want to use that and say that therefore, because one in four black men are incarcerated, therefore we are the safest in this country since the 1960s, then have at it. But I don't think that you would get that same reaction and that same statement from any African American who is aware and knows within their community what is happening, what exists today. So we are in a state right now in which we're dealing with the New Jim Crow, as Michelle Alexander would say. That is our criminal justice system. So it has been, there is a system that has been put in place essentially to over-incarcerate. I have to take some of that. I mean, the New Jim Crow, really, in just a second, in 2014, I mean, Jim Crow was, neither one of us could walk in certain parts of the United States, use certain facilities, and legally the police could come in, bash us over the head and take us out. I think we have to be careful when we start comparing what goes on in a courtroom in the United States in 2015 to Jim Crow in 1915. I think John Crawford was in a Walmart and lost his life. Yes, he was holding what like that. My quibble with Professor Alexander is there is no New Jim Crow. Jim Crow has continued in terms of structural inequality and in terms of legal, the legal kind of reinforcement, no, those laws are not on the books anymore, except that 50 years after the Voting Rights Act, John Roberts and the majority of the Supreme Court kicked the teeth out of section four by saying that this thing has changed, when in fact, Ruth Gainsburg in dissent said, here's case after case after case is when it didn't. Jim, go ahead and disappear. I'm a student at American University, I'm a junior, and I think one thing that the panel has agreed on is historical context and education and also educating police. But at my university right now, we're struggling with a lot of racist opinions and thoughts at our school by students that go to our school and who can graduate from American University with racist opinions and views and with no understanding of historical context. So my question is, do you guys believe that we should tackle the issue of implicit biases and also not knowing historical context by like forcing universities to actually require this kind of education because even if police officers are educated through the best universities in America and graduate with a bachelor's or even a master's, they may never have to understand racial institutions or privilege, et cetera, et cetera, and still become police officers and not even understand how their implicit biases are affecting certain communities. Yes, you answered your question by asking. Yes, but I think in addition to that, years ago, in 2007, we wrote the curriculum for the first mandatory African American History course in the Philadelphia public schools. It has to be K-12 as well. It has to be, it's start in kindergarten, come all the way up through 12th grade, and there shouldn't be a university in this country, public or private, that does not require its students to do exactly that. But I think a part of the problem is, as we, it's all American history. I was just gonna say, isn't this shit and just the African Americans? It's certainly black movements in America. I don't know about Americans. And what happens is when we had to start off with just black history to get the attention, and say, listen, it's American history. It's important history. I don't know if you're ever going to get people to give up their views, because one of the beauties of this country is, you can engage in racist behavior. You can have hate speech. In this America, you have a right to say it. Now, it's becoming increasingly difficult for you to function in the broader society with overtly racial biases that you speak about, that you write about. So a lot of it is covert. So you have to give people the right to be bigots if they want to be. And as a larger society moves forward, this generation of children that have been so interactive, yes, we still have some pockets where it's just either all black or all white. But for the, a lot of the children, they don't view things the way I'm 51. They don't view them the way I view them. And I'm certain in 10 years, they won't view things the way some of the children that were born 20 years ago view them. I think we, as a society, we are evolving. We're becoming more inclusive. You know, when I, when I spoke at Brookings, one of the things that people said, nothing's changed. And I invoke Congressman John Lewis, who on 60 minutes about a month ago said, there are all these people saying nothing's changed. Well, you send them to me and have them walk in my shoes. And I'll show them how it's changed. So I do respect Congressman Lewis, the schools, the public schools in his home state are more segregated now than they were when he was going. Well, they were as just as segregated now as they were when he was going through the same right struggle 50 years ago. With all due respect to him. But things have changed. Things have changed and they've gone back. And so I think that that's what we just have to acknowledge that there has been change. I'm not gonna deny that there hasn't been progress. And many areas, unfortunately, there's also been negative pro, you know, that we have gone backwards on a lot of other, you know, manners as well. So for example, in education, we are re-segregated in many states. We are at the point, the same type of segregation that we were facing back in 1954 when we're dealing with Brown v. Board. So I like your point about the fact that this is American history. That we, you know, I believe that we need to look at also, and I wanted to ask your opinion about this, that the textbooks that students are learning from these days, you need to get to that level of engagement because you have companies that are determining, you know, by their own belief systems, what it is that's being put into our children's textbooks. But we also have people that want to sanitize, But I'm just saying that this is a... Sanitize historical works, like when they wanted to take the n-word out of Huckleberry Finn. How can you read that work? It was what it is. It's Tom Sawyer. I mean, Tom Sawyer, I'm sorry. How do you take any... I don't think there will ever be a standardized American narrative. You can't because the market is driven by whoever the biggest buyer is. But the fact that public dollars are spent. But it's still driven by who is the biggest buyer next to it. I'm not disagreeing, but when you look at public education, this is what some problems they have with the president and his race to the top and his secretary of education and his privatization of public education. You know, when you start talking about funneling money for these kind of things, you really haven't a challenge. But I would definitely agree with you though. And education is definitely where we have to, we have to start. Primarily, Mr. Burton's view on this, but welcome viewers from all the panel. The war on drugs, we talked a little bit about the new term Crow a minute ago. The war on drugs obviously has been criticized for being racially biased and enforcement. Here in DC where, you know, that was the primary argument behind decriminalizing and then legalizing marijuana. There's no question, you know, African-Americans in DC are eight times more likely to be arrested than whites, despite almost identical use rates. You know, at the same time, you know, that argument has been criticized on the basis that, you know, those disparities are attributable to, you know, institutional, you know, policing tactics that need to change, you know, broader police tactics that need to change. So to what extent is drug decriminalization sort of a bandaid on a gash that doesn't really address the underlying things that need to change, and to what extent is it a legitimate means to combat, you know, disparate, racially biased enforcement? Well, in terms of the marijuana study that you cite, one of the things that's missing from that study is the location of the arrest. You smoke marijuana outside before the decriminalization, and if I could smell it, I can make, that's reasonable article of suspicion for me to come in and investigate and probably arrest you. The law has changed to remove that. I can't use the odor of burning or unburnt marijuana as reasonable article of suspicion anymore. So of course that in public places the, I can't use that, so my ability to engage goes down. In terms of, you know, the disproportion that they talked about in that study, we also have arrest disproportionately black men for murder, rape, robbery, carjacks and everything else. They didn't decriminalize that. So the issue in terms of the war on drugs is that the drug business is an underground multi-billion dollar business. And we need to rethink where we're going to put our resources in this business. And I think what's instructive for us in terms of possible solutions is to look at what happened during prohibition and the criminality that was created by making alcohol illegal. I mean, organized crime was here before, but it became supersized under prohibition. So there are a lot of things we need to look at. And these are conversations that people aren't necessarily comfortable with because they think, oh, you're endorsing drug use. No, I'm not. But what I'm saying is we do have to take a look at the resources that we're putting into that. Now, drugs and illegal businesses of any kind tend to spark violence because the way it's controlled is through the enforcement of the biggest, baddest guy on the block. So we need to take a look at those things, but that's a political decision, not a policing decision. Hi, my name is Mike Golas. In some ways, I think the discussion is a little bit superficial in the sense that we're not really talking about what is the fundamental function of police in our society? And I think the fundamental function is to enforce the social relationships that exist in this society. I keep the rich rich and keep the poor poor. That's fundamental to our society. And the police are the agents of carrying out that. So you don't see police going arrest in a scab at a factory. You don't see a policeman going, a boss fires somebody unjustly. You don't see a policeman going arrest him. A guy steals a loaf of bread, he gets arrested for that. So the whole rules are set up to protect the wealth to do at the expense of working people. And the police often buy into that outlook and they become very arrogant. Like I drove a bus in Washington for 30 years, I can never remember one time when a policeman parked in a bus stop would move his car so people could get off the bus. I never happened. He felt he was entitled to park there. That was his right as a policeman. You go into the little carryout at Georgia, New Hampshire. Every morning, the policeman come in. I'm entitled to a free cup of coffee via my friend or Mike. They would get their free cup of coffee, walk out. So you see this day in and day out, the police feel, hey, we are above the law. We make our own rules. And yeah, once in a while, unfortunately, a person gets killed, but I don't really care too much about that because I understand I'm doing my job, protecting the wealth to do and terrorizing working people. And I think until we have that type of discussion and understand what the police are all about, we're just really talking about training our police force to better keep us down, to make it less transparent what their real function in society is. And so I basically, I don't think there's any such thing as a good policeman to tell you the truth because most of them are 99% of them buy in to that outlook. I would say this. I would say in fact, when I asked what did the police do wrong, that's really what I was alluding to. The police are there to maintain order. The police are there to maintain the social relations. And yes, the most vulnerable, but with those who have the most contact with police. So that's why the reality, well, yes, crime, maybe we may have the lowest crime since the 1960s, but if you asked the most vulnerable, they would laugh at that assertion. But to your point, I think in reading, rereading the report and thinking about this, looking in vain, not even hoping, not expecting to see anything different. What you don't see is what you just addressed. Well, this is a question of the friendly cop who works with the fraternal order of police and helps a kid get out. Oh yeah, that's nice, but let's be very clear. You are going to jail for these petty crimes. And ultimately, as Gil Scott-Harriman said, those who try to steal the country never go to jail. Number one, it's not a petty crime if it's your property that they take. Let's be real. If that loafer bread is your loafer- Let me finish. Let me finish. With that included, the value of my home when it stepped by major mortgage companies? Let's deal with what you raised and answer the question. That's not petty theft, that's grand theft, brother. If you steal that loafer bread from that shopkeeper and you call the police, you're going to be arrested. As a historical fact, you are incorrect. They used to call the police in to break up strikes. That's why when the FOP was formed, they had to form it as a fraternal organization because it was illegal for police officers to be in unions. So I reject your premise that we are there to keep the rich rich and to oppress the poor. Most policemen are not living in the lap of luxury. I need to let you know. And you probably made more money working driving the bus around town than most of the cops that you seem to have a disdain for. The fact that the matter is, sir, if the police don't come in to work, you wouldn't be able to drive your bus down the street because you know what will happen? Then the law of the jungle kicks in. Just a minute. Let me make my point. Let me make the point. Look at what happened in New Orleans during Katrina. Oh, I'm sorry. Come on now. Look at what happened. It broke down. It broke down because there was no one there. That wasn't about order. That was about people being... Let me finish my point. Let me just jump in for a second. You can make those as sort of final thoughts. I'm getting a signal that we've got to make it. It's been a great and very lively discussion, but if everyone can... I'm glad you made that point about New York and when the slowdown came, how the crime rate didn't go up. I think that everybody, like a lot of folks, so let me stop saying everybody, is no absolute. Like to point the finger at the police, that the police are the boogie man, the police are the bad guys. The fact of the matter, the opposite is absolutely true. The vast majority of police officers, and I don't make excuses for misconduct, there is no excuse for misconduct because our job is to protect and serve the people who pay our salaries. I don't pay my own salary, taxpayers do. And it is a very, very tough position to be in because every time a mistake is made, whether it's a willful, if a mistake is made, you're gonna get judged harshly. If people believe that that mistake is willful, you get judged more harshly. And then when the results of what they believe is some type of criminal action on the part of the police, when it's looked at by a grand jury and no action is taken, it's like they get away with everything. I'm here to tell you, no, we don't get away with everything. It's like you said, it's very difficult to prosecute a police officer, and I think officers, and I think the system is structured that way. The intent requirement is there because there has to be intent to do that harm. It can't just be because the police officer made a mistake, you know. So the conversation, the honest conversation about what we do and how we do it and why we do it and the mistakes that we make. Do you think that the prosecution of the transit cop in the Akai Girlie case in Brooklyn is a good prosecution? Because clearly the DA there was able to indict. In that particular circumstance, tragic as that circumstance is, the issue is going to be, and I rarely want to talk about active cases that are filled in the courts. You shouldn't understand, I mean, well, to the degree that you can. I mean, because I'm thinking about the intent standard there. There was no intent to do anything to anybody in that. That is normally that we classify a discharge in a couple of ways when a weapon fires, you either intended to do it or its negligence on the part because generally your finger is not supposed to be on the trigger unless you intend to pull it and shoot it someone. That's why you see police officers walking around with their fingers outside the trigger. I was in the Marines for 20 years, they taught the same thing. So that is a tragic case where that weapon discharged I'm sure it wasn't his intent to do it. Right. And eventually, he's been charged and we'll see what happens in that case. Political prosecution, you think? Well, look at what happened prior to his indictment. What do you think? Well, I think that anybody can be indicted. That's what I think. It's all politics, which means the intent standard is political as well. Well, I think that obviously there's still more to discuss. And I think one of the major premises of this conversation today was to talk about whether or not these recommendations for the task force could be useful. And I still believe they can be. I think that this whole conversation was sparked by the fact that we were dealing with a report that came about as a result of the killing of an unarmed black man. And so we've got to take that and utilize what we've got right now. And I think that we need to continue to have this conversation, to create a structure that will create some long-term systemic change. Because I think as we all agree, we have a structure that is not facilitating justice for a large part of our communities. And whether or not we agree on whether or not that is simply a political problem or if that's a policing issue or whether or not it's because of the bias that exists within the different structures and individuals in their society, the fact of the matter is that we have continued killings of unarmed people of color, regardless of who's creating that. So we need to fix it. And this needs to be dealt with and we need to figure out how it is that we could engage in creating, in acting and effectuating, not only these recommendations, but dealing with that longer-term systemic change so we won't have to continue to come here and have this conversation about why it is we're still having these problems within either our policing force, within the training, within our political structure or whatever it is we're talking about. So I'm looking forward to not having to have this conversation again. But I do appreciate the conversation and hope that we can continue to engage and figure out how we can, and they actually, in action with these best practices that we spoke about that maybe get more of these model practices so that we can actually have a fair and I think a justice system. Thank you all for the enlightening and edifying conversations. Interesting to have a diverse set of viewpoints up here and obviously we covered a lot of ground and thanks to all of you for coming. Thank you. Thank you.