- Hello, hello, you guys,
hope everyone's doing okay out there.
It really does feel like we're living
in Hell world these days, doesn't it?
It doesn't help that it's like 100 degrees
in here right now.
If, as this video goes on, I start,
you know, looking a little drippy,
we're just gonna pretend that's not happening.
Anyway, in a dramatic turn of events,
America seems to have decided
that police brutality is, in fact, bad.
And at these police brutality protests
there have been hundreds, if not thousands,
of instances caught on camera of more police brutality.
One night I was just scrolling on Twitter,
just sort of captivated by what was happening
and it started to feel like I was watching
some sort of Civil War light unraveling in realtime.
Now, I know I'm probably not alone when I say
that this time feels different.
I have never seen so many people take to the streets
to protest police brutality in my admittedly brief existence
and yet, there have been several high profile cases
since the Black Lives Matter movement
began about seven years ago.
So what changed, why now?
I'm not totally sure, but I have a few theories.
For one, George Floyd's murder was caught on camera,
clear as day, meaning that there was no spinning it.
Another contributor is that Gen Z
is now in their teens and 20s.
- We are getting killed every day for our skin tone.
- Don't put your hands in your pockets.
Don't put your hoodie on.
Don't ride with the music too loud.
- I support Black Lives Matter because black lives
are human lives and if you don't think so,
you've got a screw loose in your head and you need help.
- There are 74 million Zoomers who are growing up
with movements like Black Lives Matter online.
Unlike the old days, you're probably not going to lose
your job or your brand deals for talking
about police brutality on social media.
In fact, people might even give you (beep) if you don't,
which, side note, I have some complicated feelings about
because obviously we wanna centrify as people to speak out
if there's something horrible happening.
But it also means that some cringey influencers
are going to use things like death and tragedy
to promote themselves to gain clout.
And let's not even mention the nauseating
performative wokeness that we have to endure
from all these giant corporations that wanna lecture people,
while also having very exploitative or even racist policies.
It makes me wonder, are companies replacing churches?
Are they becoming our new moral compasses?
My last theory is that people are just tired of everything.
They're tired of the lack of accountability.
They're tired of the corruption.
So it's no wonder that some people look at this
and just wanna burn the whole thing down.
You know, whatever the magical formula is,
we are here now, and it finally feels
like change might actually be happening.
But the question now is what kind of change?
What will it take to not only reduce police violence,
but to end it?
(upbeat music)
There's been a lot of discussion about
how police brutality is a systemic problem.
It's basically the idea that we can't really fix this
by just eliminating individual bad apples.
We have to think critically about
how policing is actually done in America.
The philosophy of it, the practice of it,
from top to bottom.
- You know, police have a lot of power.
They have an authority to take someone's life.
They have the authority to take someone's liberty.
And to allow that level of authority
into the hands of someone without allowing
for some kind of formalized training,
I mean, we require doctors, we require nurses,
we require phlebotomists, you know,
to have formalized education.
- This is Mecole Jordan-McBride.
She is the senior program manager at NYU's Policing Project.
She is working on a pilot project on the ground right now
in Chicago that changes how they police.
- We believe that if we actually allow
for the community to be at the front end,
then we'll have less back end acts happening.
And that looks like allowing for the community
who are experts in their area to be able to say,
"These are the issues,
"this is what public safety looks like to us.
"These are some solutions that we think will be viable."
And then you have buying in, not only from the CPD,
but you have it from the community,
so then the community doesn't feel like
they're being occupied.
They feel like they're actually being heard.
Because at the end of the day,
anytime we're talking about Back end accountability,
someone's life has been changed.
- So you're piloting this in Chicago right now?
- Yes. - And how's it going?
- So far so good, I mean,
we didn't get here overnight, right?
Where we are with policing, this is a historical situation.
These are systemic problems that we're dealing with.
Especially when you have a situation
where you have people who are not of color
who are going through this militarized training,
there's already very strong stereotypes
about certain communities.
And you're thrown into these communities at midnight,
or at the height of when there may be unrest,
police officers across the country,
especially as they are going into various communities,
need to understand what make up those communities,
the background of those communities,
before we send people into these communities and say,
"Have at it."
- And the message sort of is have at it.
When I was looking up information
about police training for my little brother,
he was kinda interested in maybe becoming a cop,
I was floored at some of the things
that the police leadership
are saying about their profession.
Like they're at war.
One recruiting website reads,
"In hand-to-hand battle,
"staying in shape may be the edge that keeps you alive.
"The youngsters you'll be chasing are gonna be half your age
"and a lot of them are twice your size."
Is the difference between a bad cop and a good cop
how well you can tackle somebody?
This sentiment is echoed in trainings across the country
where the average cop gets about 110 hours
of firearms training and self-defense training,
and only eight hours of community problem-solving.
- I don't know the exact point where we started using tanks
and full body suits, even to camouflage, right?
It's like a paramilitary.
It's definitely seen as an occupying force.
So when you have that, it's like a war zone.
(upbeat music)
- Well, we can look at cops and say,
"Hey, you're not doing your job."
We also need to ask ourselves
what job we're asking them to do.
Over time, police have been expected
to address a truly dizzying number
of social problems all by themselves.
Drug addiction, mental health crises, homelessness,
domestic violence, truancy, I mean, the list goes on.
- When we don't take the time to understand
the complexities of everything you just mentioned,
especially when you start thinking about education
and how defunded education is in certain communities,
which leads to certain social ills.
So what you have is a cycle of violence.
You have a cycle of poverty that leads
to some of the social ills that we have.
And so, the things that come with that
are oftentimes, is higher crime.
And so because we won't take a step back and say,
"Okay, what got us here," we want immediate gratification
and the immediate gratification is we need more police.
- It's this point about getting to the root
of our social problems that leads some to argue
that we should defund the police.
And I find that what a lot of people mean by this
is that we should divest from the police, right?
We should be cutting the budget and instead,
putting that money toward things like education,
social services, job training,
transitional housing, things like that.
But others interpret defund the police
in more radical terms, to literally abolish the police.
Some Black Lives Matter activists have raised the concern
that this would likely just mean
that police become a private company.
And that could mean even less accountability.
Mecole also worries that the approach could backfire.
- I'm careful to go from one extreme to the next
without a pathway there.
But I do think that the conversation is lending
to restructuring budgets, so that we're not looking
at spending so much money on military equipment,
and things like that, funding that's going into those,
to actually put them into social services
so that police aren't having to do
as much of the social service work
as they're complaining about, right?
And as we are moving towards that direction,
maybe there's a conversation later.
But I think that that, to take it from here to there,
that quick without a drawing in between point,
would potentially backfire on us.
- I think no matter what camp people find themselves in,
we can probably all agree that we should
have a little think about the budget.
City operating budgets have been flying all over Twitter.
For instance, in Columbus, Ohio,
the police have a 360 million dollar budget.
Now pull out your magnifying glass
and see if you can find education in there.
(upbeat music)
Is it true that the police investigate themselves?
- So yes, historically speaking,
the police have the authority to write their own policy
without having to vet it publicly.
There is no community input.
There is no real community process.
- What role does qualified immunity play in that?
- Police union contracts provides
an extreme amount of protection.
For example, an officer has up to 24 hours
before they have to make an official statement.
And they can modify their statement after video
and audio recordings come out.
- What?
- This is a conversation my husband and I have
because he works at Corrections, ironically.
And so, you know, I get it,
if you have to discharge your weapon,
and you know that has resulted
either significant life-alteration or death,
that's a lot to process for a normal person, right?
But 24 hours without having to say anything,
and the ability to come back and retract
or change your statement allows for, for example,
with Laquan McDonald where you saw this officer
like literally dropped out the car
and opened up on this 17-year-old,
and four or five police officers all came up
with the same exact statement that was a blatant lie.
And if these videos didn't exist...
- No accountability. - Exactly.
- I think this underscores how revolutionary
cellphone cameras and social media really are on this issue.
It's easy to see how in the past,
this stuff has just been swept under the rug,
over and over and over again.
It leaves me wondering what it will take to heal,
if it's even possible to heal.
- So my mom told me a long time ago
that, "Trust is the thing that is
"the hardest to feel and the easiest to lose."
Some people are just never gonna have it
because of the flawed history and how deeply it has run.
But I think for those who can be captured
with the idea of we can really build this together,
it has to be more transparency.
It has to be a real pathway for community members
to be a partner, and not an afterthought,
in how do we really start thinking about public safety?
What does that look like to you, community member?
What does that look like to us as a policing agency?
And allow for open space to say,
for contradiction, for discussion.
And I think not being afraid of negative responses
because I think that a lot of times
people wanna be applauded.
No, we have to leave space for criticism.
And that is the basis and the base level
for where we start building trust.
- There's been a lot of talk about improving
transparency through technology.
A lot of people, I think it was after Ferguson,
were calling for the use of body cams.
This doesn't seem to have gone the direction
that I think a lot of optimists had hoped.
- Technology in and of itself is just a tool.
It cannot be relied on for the trust-building,
and the relationship-building,
and the transparency that is needed.
There still is someone who has to create it
and someone who has to use it.
And so there's still a place where bias can be built in.
When we even look at the makeup of technology companies,
most of 'em don't look like us
because they come from a lot of times,
a very different life experience.
I wanna say that it's not even intentional,
but you cannot understand or even think far enough
to understand the potential implications
and knowing what that could potentially do in the community,
I think that that is a failure also
with even in the tech industry,
that we have to consider and we have to start looking at.
- Thank you so much you guys,
for joining me for this conversation.
I'd suggest checking out the resources on their website.
That's policingproject.org.
I'm also going to be donating all of the advertising revenue
from this video to the Policing Project.
And if you wanna donate yourself,
I'll drop a link down below.
Take care of yourselves out there my dears,
and I will see you next time.