A blatant,
horrific disregard for humanity.
Just moments ago,
the attorney general delivering
a stinging indictment
of the Louisville Metro
Police Department.
Merrick Garland
announcing the results of a two year
probe that followed the police
killing of Breonna Taylor.
Investigators say
Louisville cops
trampled on civil rights
in their every day.
Police work
and the Justice Department
finding that Louisville
cops violated
just about every shred of decency,
engaging in outright racist behavior
against the black community.
Some officers have demonstrated
disrespect for the people
they are sworn to protect.
Some have videotaped themselves
throwing drinks at protest.
Pedestrians from their cars
insulted people with disabilities
and called black people monkeys.
Animal and boy.
This conduct is unacceptable.
It is heartbreaking to
begin our coverage of this
with CNN's Evan Perez. Evan.
A damning indictment, the report.
I was flipping through it
before we came on the air.
It's just example
after example
of a simply stunning
and clearly racist behavior. Now what?
Well, now, John, the Justice Department
and the government
there in Louisville
is going to go to court
and they're going to have
a judge and force
an agreement
whereby the department
is going to try to improve
the way it does its work, the way it
conducts itself
with the African-American community.
And this report really,
you know, goes into chapter and verse,
not only with African-Americans,
but the people who have disabilities,
but also white people who
perhaps were drunk
and police using excessive force
and having nothing happened to them
as a result of this.
You can see example
after example in this report.
It's one of the ugliest
certainly I've seen
in one of these things that that
has come forward in the last two years.
One of the interesting things
about this
report, though,
John, is that you can see,
according to the Justice Department,
you can see that
the Louisville Police Department
has been trying to make some changes.
They knew
that they had a lot of problems.
And yet when Breonna Taylor,
when the killing of Breonna Taylor
happens in 20, 20, it's clear that
hardly any of those changes
were making a difference.
For instance,
they had this so-called VIPR unit,
which was an anti-crime unit
that they tried to rename,
but essentially was still doing
the same thing.
They just called it a mobile unit.
And what the investigation found was
that they were using things
like pretextual police stops, which is,
you know,
anyone who
they thought might be just randomly
making a wrong turn
or something on a road
that would stop them to try to figure out
if there were additional crimes
is something that we've seen
around the country
that the police departments
are trying
to get away from, John,
because they do result in confrontations
that sometimes turn deadly.
Evan, stay with us.
Let's also bring into the conversation.
Ron Johnson,
he's the former
captain of the Missouri State
Highway Patrol.
Captain, grateful for your time today.
We saw this in Minneapolis
after the beating of George Floyd,
a consent decree
to look at pattern of practices
by the police department.
You're familiar.
This happened right there in Ferguson,
Missouri,
where you were familiar with that.
How do they work?
And I guess then the question is,
do they work? What has to be done?
What has to happen in the city,
not just with the federal oversight
in the city on the force for this to work
Well, they come in and
there's mandatory
training, new pattern of practices
that are put in place.
And we do see positive
result from these consent decrees
that kind of give us some standard either
guidelines or policies.
And that's
what we have to see in our country.
And I think Congress is looking
at some of that, the George Floyd rule
that we have to standardize
our expectations, our policies,
the procedures for policing.
And I agree
that this is
some of the ugliest reporting I've heard.
When we look at
what's come out of Louisville,
it's ugly, as ugly as an understatement.
I appreciate your being polite about it,
but when you flip through this
and again,
I have been able to read it
all, it just came out.
But just flipping through the headlines
and looking at some of the examples
and the citations
before it came on the air,
it is just time after time after time,
you see some of them.
They're using excessive
force, conducting searches
based on invalid warrants,
unlawfully stopping searches,
detaining people
during traffic stops,
unlawfully discriminating
against black people.
Some of it is the big stuff,
like no knock warrants
and invading people's
privacies in the black community.
Some of it is
I'm going to call the little stuff
and I don't mean to minimize it,
but the pervasiveness of
it is what jumps out.
I was just looking at here
two times
more traffic citations
against black residents
than white residents.
Nearly three times
as many searches of the vehicles
when it's a black person stopped versus
a white person being stopped.
Which makes this point from the mayor.
Listen to Mayor Greenburg
saying some people in Louisville
get this.
Some people probably blind to it.
I know
some people are surprised and horrified
to hear stories about certain officers
operating in ways
that are so counter to our values
as a community.
I also know
there are people
who are not surprised
to hear the findings in this report
because they see this report
as confirmation of complaints
they've made about their own interactions
with law enforcement,
sometimes for years.
How, Captain Johnson,
do you bridge that in the work ahead?
The African-American woman
is the interim police chief.
This is her challenge, first
and foremost on a daily basis right now.
But but how do you do this?
Implement the reforms necessary
when black residents of your city, Brown
residents of your city,
may have a very different view,
incredibly different view
of the police department
than your white citizens?
Well, I think you have
to give those individuals
that are being empathic
by what is going on.
They have to have a voice.
They have to have a seat at the table.
And they have to be
a part of this training process
and this cultural change.
I think too often the people
that are being impacted
across this country
by this behavior
do not have a voice
and they're not a part of the solution.
And that has to happen for success.
And Evan Perez, to that point
that it has to happen with success
is kept.
And Johnson smartly points out.
Look, there'll be federal oversight now.
There will be an independent broker
to judge who oversees all of this,
and the city has signed on to it.
So everybody today
talking in a cooperative tone
about the mayor gets it,
the chief gets it.
They're going to get federal help
and they're going to fix this.
What has the practice
been in your history
of when the bump hits the road?
How do you get through
the inevitable disagreements
about how to proceed?
Right.
Well, one of the issues,
John, do you see in this thing
with these things
is that, you know,
after a couple of years,
sometimes police departments
get tired of having,
you know, the Justice Department
over there looking over their shoulder.
And there's a lot of criticism of this
of this practice.
Certainly,
I think Republican lawmakers on the Hill
think that there's too much of this stuff
and that,
you know, essentially police are being
are being victimized.
Right. By the Justice Department.
But if you look at this report
and if you look at
some of the other reports
around the country,
you know that there's a problem
and there's got to be a way to fix it.
Some some cities have had success.
Los Angeles, for instance,
had one of these.
And they've improved the way
the community perceives
the police department.
But there's a long way
to go in Louisville.
And and you can see that there's
going to be
more of these types of pattern
or practice
investigations announced
around the country, John,
early in this particular process.
Evan Perez,
Captain Johnson, grateful
for your insights on this day.
We'll stay on top of this story.
This report really points to widespread
abuses.
It touches
not just on race, but also on gender,
on people with disabilities.
These probes have happened before.
They happen all over the country.
And police departments, big and small.
What stood out to you on this one?
What stands out to me,
Abbie, is the fact
that this is with the consent
and agreement
of the mayor of the city of Lewisville,
Louisville's police department,
and mayor.
Oftentimes
people think of this relationship
between the Justice Department,
these local police departments
as hostile or combative.
It's the folks from Washington
coming in, wagging their fingers
at a local police department here.
Everyone worked together
and came to report.
There's a reason
why the attorney general gave
these remarks in Louisville.
Right.
Flanked by leadership
of the police department
in the city there.
And that's really significant here.
It's a call for change
both at the federal and local level.
And it seems that there's broad agreement
with leadership there.
Yeah, that's such a good point.
I mean, I wonder, Andy,
do you think that
that is really
the only way that these things change
if the local officials, not just
take it,
take this kind of feedback from the DOJ,
but also are a part of the process
of actually fixing these problems?
Well, Abbie, it's really essential
that you have
that sort of
collaboration for a number of reasons.
First
is that oftentimes police departments
and police leaders
are hamstrung in what they can do
and what they can actually change
within their own department,
particularly when it comes to
disciplining officers
because they are restricted
by broad collective bargaining agreements
that don't allow any,
you know,
really effective, quick,
substantial change.
And so often,
police leadership
is is pleased to have DOJ come in
and basically enforce
the law and require that sort of change.
And then as you mentioned, in order
for this stuff to really stick to
to push cultural change across
a law enforcement
institution, it's very hard.
It takes a long time.
It takes commitment over years.
And years
to really change the mentality
and that you can't force that on people.
You have to have them bought into that
to that process.