Transcripts For CSPAN2 Neil 20240704

More television for serious readers. I am an associate professor of sociology and Public Service at New York University, and i am thrilled to be in conversation around this great book. I am going to quickly introduce our author and commentator, and we will dive into conversation. Neil gross, author of this book, is a sociologist best known for his research on higher education, politics, and academic life. He is a professor of sociology. In addition to this book he is the author of two other books, wire professors liberal, and why do conservatives care . And the making of the american philosopher. He is the coeditor for four other books. Patrick is the william s. Professor of sociology and Public Affairs at the Princeton School of public and international affairs. His research focuses on urban inequality, violence, and public policy. He was formerly chair of sociology here at New York University and serves as scientific director at the crime lab in new york. He too is the author of multiple books. Please join me in welcoming neil, and i look forward to your comments. [applause] i went to start by saying thank you to eric and the whole staff year at the institute for Public Knowledge for organizing this event. I am grateful to eric for his support over the years and to everyone here, and to pat and to jacob and to liv blazer who could not be here today and sent few questions along in her absence. Walk the walk is my first nonacademic book. It is narrative nonfiction. I thought it might be appropriate to read a small selection from it rather than do the standard academic introduction, and my hope is during the cuban date we can dive more deeply. Q and a we can dive more deeply into the substance of the chapters. On a mild, late spring night in 1993, a Police Officer in berkeley, california sought a black and yellow two door chevy for a traffic violation. The officer was 21 years old, white. He was working a midnight shift in the lower Income Neighborhood adjacent to North Oakland that had seen more than share of violence, much of it linked to the trading crack cocaine. The year before 12 meet 12 people were murdered in berkeley. Nearly 900 were robbed, and more than 700 were victims of aggravated assault, putting the Violent Crime rate at twice the national average. At 1 30 a. M. , the officer was driving north on the next commercial and residential street. A block ahead, the chevy was stopped at a red light in the left turn lane. Not waiting for the light to turn green, the driver of the car lurched forward, veering out of the lane. This was hardly a serious offense. The streets were empty and there was no oncoming traffic. Still, it was illegal. The officer hit his overhead lights. A car stopped, one of a dozen he mightve made that night. Except the car accelerated. The officer could not tell what he was trying to get away. At the next three the chevy went left. The officer followed. Stanton, a small street that branched off, and as the officer like most small to midsize Police Agencies, the Berkeley Police department did not have its own Police Academy. With the officer joined as a recruit, he was sent to the academy run by the city of sacramento built on the grounds with the california Highway Patrol trained. There, and future men and women of Law Enforcement of their morning runs. The recruits all idealistic in their own way, driven to scratch some interest by putting on a badge. Trainers taught them that car stops can be dangerous, even for minor infractions. Usually drivers and passengers are cooperative, but you never know. You might pull over someone with a felony warrant or a dealer with a stash and a gun hidden under the front seat or a guy with anger issues looking for a fight. Posters hung in the gymnasium where the recruits practice defensive tactics. One showed the chp survival created. Quote, the will to live, to survive the attack, was to be uppermost in every officers mind. Fight back against all odds. I do not let them kill you on some dirty freeway. Recruits were trained to be on high alert when stopping cars. At the cardinal rules with that you had to keep everyone contained, and hence had to be visible at all times. Ing on Stanton Street as the officer pulled up a young man about his age, black with cornrows stepped from the passenger of the car. He was shirtless with pale blue shorts and blue nike. The driver had stayed the wheel. The officer got out of his vehicle and yelled to the passenger, get back in the car and close the door. The man said flatly. Why im stopping this car. Get back in and close the door. The man ignored him. He began walking toward the porch of his house, only a paces away. The officer trying to keep his eye on the driver, ran to the passenger and put his hand his shoulder. The man flung it off. If you touch me again, im going to kick your , he said. The two were face to face. The man had threatened the cop. He was going to jail. Get on the ground. Youre under arrest. The officer ordered. He wanted the man seated or prostrate. So would be harder for him to make good on his threat. The officer. A recent of uc berkeley, had followed every of the rodney king case. But he wasnt thinking about the symbolism. A white Police Officer ordering, a black man to the ground. He was thinking, if this guys willing to fight rather sit in a car while i write his buddy ticket, there must be something he doesnt want me to know. Or find his other thought was, dont let them kill you on some dirty freeway. He called for cover. The driver also black and in his twenties, was out of the car. Now to the passenger again made, a move toward the porch. This time, the officer grabbed him, pushed him against the hood of the chevy, intending to apply handcuffs. The man pulled loose and swung at the officer, clocking him on his cheek. The officer stumbled a couple of steps and drews baton. Few police had access tasers back then. The lapd officers assaulted rodney king were the exception, so batons were the best non lethal option. Now the officer upped his radio request to code three cover for an emergency. Sirens kicked on in the distance, along with the intermittent beeping police frequencies that signals trouble. Get on the ground. Youre under. The officer kept repeating, thwacking the passenger in his leg while the man stood ready to box. He grabbed the baton, but officer wrested it back and hit him again in the leg. Then once in the abdomen a job hed been taught in defensive tactics. His partner from next beat over came running to cuff the driver as the two of them fought. Her baton tumbled from her hands. The driver went to snatch it off the ground and she tackled him. Meanwhile, an older couple had emerged from the house. The passengers parents it would later turn out and, were trying to restrain their son. The officer saw why he was holding a sizable rock his head and was about to throw it. A third cop arrived and rushed to help the driver. The first officer unwholesome hit a handgun, a stainless steel 40 caliber smith and wesson and pointed it at the rock wielding passenger, lining them up in his sights so that hed have a clean shot. Put the rock down, he screamed. After a tense moment, the man did as he was ordered. The officer wasnt with the choice of shooting him front of his parents or taking a rock the head. That berkeley officer was me. We never figured out why the passenger fought. He had an arrest record but wasnt on probation or parole. He had no warrants and contraband on him. Hed been but wasnt drunk. Taken into custody. All he would say was ill be out. Gross. Ill find you you. The stop that night on staton should never have escalated as it did. The outcome could have been horrific. The passenger wasnt blameless. He should have gotten back in the car when i asked. He shouldnt have threatened me or punched me in the face. Or tried to throw a rock. But i wasnt blameless either. Nor was the Police Institution that molded me into the cop. I was as a rookie. Checked all the right boxes. I was born and raised in the berkeley area. Would be policing my hometown. I was educated. I was young, but not completely inexperienced. Id worked part time for several Police Agencies while in college, including as a dispatcher. I had a clean record. Id gone into policing with the best of intentions to help people and make the community safer. And yet there i was, gun in hand, fighting a young black man over what . Over . Nothing really. What went wrong . I served as a berkeley officer for 11 months before quitting and going to graduate school to get a ph. D. In sociology. Looking for answers to questions just like that. Ive been a social scientist for more than two decades now, and ive thought often the staten street fight with a mixture of guilt, sadness and dismay. At Colby College in maine. I teach courses about the police. I sometimes assess proposals for Police Reform by asking whether they would have prevented the kind of escalation that occurred. Could the whole incident have been avoided . My training had been different. If the department had different policies in place. If the Police Academy hadnt taught me to be paranoid about car stops, perhaps i wouldnt have perceived a passenger walking away as such a threat if california had mandated meaningful deescalation training for officers, maybe i would have thought to use calmer tone or to Say Something less hostile than get on the ground. Maybe i would have retreated after the man threatened me and waited for the arrival. More officers so we could have arrested safely. Through sheer strength of numbers, if Department Policy had that lethal force could only be used when there was absolutely no alternative, maybe i would have ducked for cover when it looked like rocks were about to fly. Instead of drawing my weapon. Maybe, but probably not. You can train and rewrite policy all day long, but done in isolation. That wont get you very far. If youve got a department full of cops who think of themselves as aggressive crime fighters locked in a life or death struggle against the forces of evil, which is how many officers thought of themselves. Even in liberal educated then alienation resentment are bound to spread in heavily policed neighborhoods and in the heat of the moment. You wont see police down. Policy change is crucially important. But to fix policing, we need change. Cop culture. The values the beliefs and assumptions. The worldview of those in Law Enforcement. Right now, not enough people are talking about how to do that. In the wake of the murder, george floyd by former minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin in the massive black lives matter protests that followed a box data for progress poll found large majorities of likely voters supported such Police Reform ideas as mandatory body cameras, collecting better data on use of force and banning chokeholds. Likewise, a cnn poll found a mere 14 of American Adults believe that policing works pretty well as is, and 53 favored major changes to the institution, with remaining 32 preferring smaller scale reforms. Politicians at the federal state and local levels primarily the democratic side of the aisle, tried to address this demand for change. Federal legislation ultimately stalled. The senate sought to forbid chokeholds and no knock warrants reduce Liability Protections for police, require implicit bias training and much more. States, for their part, upped deescalation, instructing officers to intervene. They saw their peers engage in misconduct and changed laws governing the use of force cities, increased oversight of police operations, pulled cops out of schools, even prohibited Police Officers from doing low level traffic enforcement. But whether wellconceived or not, each of these plans for reform will quickly run up a limit. The aggressive culture of policing that characterizes american departments that culture prioritizes above all, tactical safety, putting bad guys behind bars. Loyalty to other cops. And not taking flak from anyone on the street. Policy changes perceived to be at odds with those values, basically, anything that constrains the options cops have in dealing with what they see as dangerous and situations will be resisted and undermined at every turn. Weve been here before. After the 2014 death of Michael Brown in ferguson and the subsequent protests and unrest president obama assembled a task force charged with developing a for policing in the 21st century. The task force issued policy recommendations, but its central insight was that policy change isnt enough. Alone to ensure good policing. Theres an old saying the task noted Organizational Culture eats policy for lunch. Any Law Enforcement organization can make great rules and policies, the report continued. But if policies conflict with existing culture, they will not be institutionalized and behavior will not change change. Despite the reports emphasis for reform, typically aim at regular or limiting the power of police not changing police culture. Politicians and pundits talk occasionally about the need for Law Enforcement officers view themselves as guardians rather warriors. But its difficult to know that distinction entails. Let alone how agencies could move in such a direction. Its as though policymakers cant imagine. What ethical, effective democratic policing might look like. But the culture of policing can be transformed. Three unusual departments dedicated to replacing the aggressive fighter with Something Different and better have worked to come up with healthier, more socially responsible models of what it means. Be a good cop. Many Police Forces promise change. These three are walking the walk and they have invaluable lessons to teach all of us about the importance of leadership, creativity, perseverance and Community Support when it comes changing how Police Officers approach their job. I profiled these three cities in my book stockton, california with 320,000 residents. It is the central valley. Chief jones who graduated from the police one year after i did. Hasnt turned stockton pd into a policing nirvana. Stockton is a rough and tumble city plagued by Gang Violence and of the officers in the 400 plus Person Department there are old school as hard charging as they come, but an increasing number are new school. Joness achievement. Over the course of ten years. In introducing a palpably better approach warrants exploration in colorado, a high plains town of 100,000 northeast of boulder, chief mike butler spent decades building one of the most Progressive Police in the nation. One already doing many of the things reform activists are calling for. The results are impressive. Crime rates have fallen without resort, heavy handed tactics and the police are seen by locals as contributing to the social good. Finally, lagrange, Georgia Population 31,000, a pencil on the map not far from the alabama line. Improbably, perhaps, Lagrange Police chief lew mar, a republican and reluctant supporter of president trump, has refashioned a once manifestly racist Police Department into one focused on racial reconciliation. Equality before the law and the of life. How this was accomplished is instructive for. Any community looking to move forward from. A blighted policing past. The challenges this country faces in getting the professional, equitable and humane policing it needs are formidable. The aggressive culture of policing encountered 25 years ago prevails in too many departments and racial inequities are entrenched amid National Outrage about police abuse. The temptation has arisen to either write off policing or impose a pose. A plethora of legal and policy restraints to bring into line. But we write off the police not in the foreseeable future. And while restraints on police are needed, public institutions, the police need more than rules to effectively. They also require an animating spirit, a culture one that offers employees a sense of Mission Purpose and identity and, that steers them toward doing the right thing. Changing cop culture become a new national priority. Thank you. Ill move over and well start the conversation. Thanks. All right. Thank you for for that excerpt. So what were going to do now is pat is going to share some comments and then nia will respond and well kind of break into a conversation and including some some q a from from you all. Yeah. Thanks, jacob. And by the way, jacob failed to mention my true claim to fame, which is that my first dissertation that i ever chaired, dr. Jacob faber summit last year. That is what im most proud of in my career. So this is this is a beautiful book. It really is. You all reading this . The neil, you did fantastic job putting this together. Its a major accomplishment. You know, neil describes it as narrative nonfiction, which is accurate. But he also weaves in social science in to every chapter in a way thats seamless in a way that is powerful, in a way doesnt miss the the base behind, the arguments. So it really is a major accomplishment to do that and to kind of tell these stories in such a riveting way. Its its not a common trait for academics to write this clearly and this this beautifully. I was i loved reading this book. I really and i appreciate just the care that went into it. So theres that dimension and then theres the of it and you what we decided just before here is that this would be a little bit more enjoyable. We had a more informal conversation about this because theres a lot of directions we could go here, theres a lot to talk about. So neil takes us into the world of these three departments and, you know, immediately, as i was reading it, it struck that this is a different approach than a lot of the debate, a lot of the discourse policing right now. So, you could imagine going in different worlds into worlds where the the goal to abolish this institution in a world where the goal is you know find places that have invested in other kinds of institutions that take some of the pressure off of Police Departments and by that i mean institutions that basic care for the residents of a community. Institutions that deal with the fallout of extreme inequality. Institutions that provide services for addiction. For Mental Illness. For homelessness. All which falls to Police Departments. Because we planned it that way. But by default because we havent invested in those other institutions. You could imagine places that are trying to deal with the conditions that provide the backdrop both for violence and for police violence, meaning what kinds of places are going after guns . The prevalence of guns makes policing much more dangerous and also makes the police much dangerous. If there is a large circulation of guns within a given area. Or you could go to a world where that looks like our world but works a little bit better, where the Police Department functions at a higher level, where some of the values that neil possessed as a cop and as a someone who cares about inequality, who cares about the the aggressive and often violent and often thought tearing nature of policing in lots of places, not everywhere, but in lots of places, the country. So thats the world you took us to in the end, the world that that looks just like the world we all know about that has a few leaders have really done extraordinary work changing how they do job, how they interact with with residents and in a few places. Maybe you could just talk about why you went there why thats the world that you took us to. So i want to say at the outset that, you know, i found surprising overlaps between the two alternative worlds that you described, not always. In terms of language, but but in terms of substance. So ill give you two examples. In in la grange, which is a city thats about half black, white, long, long history of of of racism, its even a very recently i interviewed a black officer there, a retired officer there who worked in the seventies and told me that at that time there was a rule place that he wasnt allowed to make car stops on white people. And and this was community that until the early nineties had de facto segregated recreation facilities for kids. So a place with a very difficult history and the police there very conservative and they were absolutely clear to me that they would favor a significant expansion of Mental Health resources in the community and that that was something that they wanted. They didnt want to be dealing with Mental Health. Thats a major concern of theirs. One of the officers i profiled, a really great guy named robbie, spends a lot time dealing with those suffering from Mental Illness and cares a great deal about about their health and wellbeing and and knows that hes better at that than many other officers. But is aware that he cant do that job as well. Mental health professionals. So thats thats one example of overlap. Certainly he wouldnt be in favor of terms like, you know, defund or or abolish. But but theres an interesting overlap there between those the agenda of of Law Enforcement of doing a better job, of responding safely to the community and and of some. And then longmont, colorado, Different Community there, a more Progressive Police chief. Mike butler spent, decades being concerned with with mass incarceration. He hed seen the growth of imprisonment nationally and in colorado he was deeply concerned about this both for reasons of a kind of a theory of justice and also on spiritual grounds he thought that you know locking people away in cages for long periods of time was was not only a poor of resources but but immoral. You know, he recognized in some cases it was essential to pull people out of the community until they could act in a in a safer fashion. But he wanted scale back the Police Departments in criminal justice and i remember having a conversation with him. I was in my backyard in maine and i had a call and he said, neal, one of my goals in longmont is, is to separate the Police Department from the criminal justice system. And i thought, what does that mean . I to, you know, go figure out what hes talking about. So one of the things hes done is to get behind something called Restorative Justice, which is an alternative to incarceration. Lots of communities are experimenting this now. Certainly lots of lots of School Disciplinary proceedings around Restorative Justice. But he had a different vision for it in conjunction with a Community Organization in longmont. He devised a plan where if officers come across somebody who they could benefit from something other than incarceration in response to criminal offense, for example, a kid who shoplifted a cheap piece of jewelry, the cops dont have to make an arrest. They can steer that offender, this Community Run volunteer based Restorative Justice process, which brings offender ultimately together with the victim, the victims willing in a kind restorative circle, theres restitution involved. Theres an educator component, you know, and experimental data suggest that that often results in lower rates of reoffending than incarceration and it produces lower rates, ptsd for victims as well. So, you know, mike butler is not would never use the terms, you know, abolish defund but you know parts of that agenda are consistent with what he was talking about. So, you know, i think i was interested in places that were that were doing Something Different, were doing things that, were experimental, that were trying to shake things up and and sometimes that results in sorts of unusual overlaps of counterfactual worlds along the lines of what you described. Great. Thanks. Is this working still . Yes. So i would love to of push a little bit on specifically that. And of. Conditional and of compromise, not compromise, but kind of overlap of interest in kind of supports for things like improve services, Mental Health services for for members of the community and and of get your thoughts on where that agreement comes from and specifically why what are the motivations of and i would to also hear your thoughts on the extent to which were kind of euthanizing with words like liberal and conservative and what those words actually about how we view individual laws and the role of the police how you know Mental Health could be an individual problem, a manifestation, structural inequalities and what a in a conditional between both of these sides. The issue of the role of police in society and a means for changing culture within Police Institutions and the likelihood thereof. Yeah, thanks. I mean, i guess ill try to answer that from from the perspective. The officers that i that i interviewed, you know, i tried to write the book to some extent in their voice and kind of close, close third person. You know, certainly there are some cops who think about issues like structural inequality and the like. But but thats the main thing that most are concerned. You know, i think. To generalize, i think, you know, most most cops think of themselves as being in the crime suppression business. Thats why they got into it. They want to help the community. Sure. But but thats their thats their main concern. Responding to crime. You know, i think they also ultimately recognize, as we sometimes dont in this country that, you know, the police are the the violent arm of the theyre theyre theyre to ultimately to pull people before judges would who have committed criminal offenses and who otherwise wouldnt wouldnt. Thats thats kind of the function they play in society. And so cops are are also in many places overwhelmed with calls, you know, i think we have an image of of policing us as kind of the cops just driving around spending time patrolling. And certainly that happens sometimes in many communities, even smaller communities. The volume of calls is extraordinary. And so many officers are going called to call the call. And their goal is to just clear the calls and move on to the next one. And they recognize that one of the main a major thing that they with is Mental Health, whether theyre directly people calls about people experiencing mental crises or or kind of criminal offenses that have Mental Health crises as their backdrop. And the cops recognize that that most of the time they are not the best to deal with those calls. Sometimes its important and necessary that they be there. You know, there are many situations in which. You know, you would want the police if, you know, if someones expressing crisis and and and the persons become violent, it may not be safe to bring in mental professionals or social workers, but the cops recognize that many other cases, they rather not be the ones responding. So i think they would much prefer that there be 24 hour responders in many communities. There arent even in programs that are in places that have experimented with with crisis responders. You know, typically theyre not working four seven cops are there. Theyre always on their why people you know, theyre why people ultimately call one one when something bad is happening. And so i think that they would wish for an expansion of those kinds of programs, if only because would free them up to do what they see as their job. Ill also add as a side benefit that that in places that have Mental Health clinicians paired with cops they did this in longmont long before people were calling for it. They had a program where Mental Health clinicians, social workers would ride in a car with a specialized officer and a paramedic to respond to Mental Health calls. There werent enough of those cops to go around, but the officers in those situations learned from the Mental Health professionals. So there was some rub off of of those skills at deescalation. And i think, you know, the more of that you can do, you kind of seed the growth of of better practices on the part officers. So, you know, i think thats all the good. The more that we could do it that the better. I think, you know, most officers would recognize. Thats great. You know, in la grange also just wanted more beyond just health responders. They just wanted more Mental Health facilities because they felt like there was there werent any. And people, you know, they theyd go in for an emergency and theyd be let out and they wouldnt receive any treatment. And and the cops felt that that was a horrible situation. So, neal, i, i read this book and i see as a proof of concept, meaning this gives very. Documentation of Police Departments that look very different from, you know, what weve all come to see over the past eight years, eight or nine years from cell phone videos. These departments look very different from memphis look very different from minneapolis and. Then secondly, its a proof of concept that that culture plays a central role and that Police Chiefs actually have it in these cases. Influence on on establishing a culture, a department which i think is a a broader and really important finding or argument make. How do you view this as a what do you want to see . Do want does that message kind of what youre trying to convey or do you have a different a different kind, kind of vision that you want readers to come away with . Thank you. You know, one thing that ive spent some time thinking about is the peculiar nature of change in the american criminal justice system. You know, ours a incredibly decentralized. There are, you know, depending on how you count Something Like 15, 18,000 different state, local Police Departments. Thats a lot. And on the one hand, that that makes it really hard to bring about uniform because even if you, you know, try to mandate something from above, which, you know, hard to do at the federal level, you know, how does translate down into so many different agencies. But the flipside of that on this is, you know, part of the genius of decentralization, which we dont talk about enough is that that youve got, you know, 15 or 18,000 potential sites of experimentation where, you know, if if you know, Civic Leaders, Police Chiefs, even lower level officers decide that they want to try Something Different. They. And if those experiments are successful, then that has potential to diffuse and shape the practices of many other police organizations. You know, one of my goals for this book to report out from places that had experimented in successful ways. I want people to take from the book that. Those experiments can happen. They often require community then that these chiefs did their jobs. They often had lots of input from Community Members and had Transformative Experiences alongside Community Members. But, you know, if we recognize that kind of experimentation is possible, then we should be sort of telling the stories of places that have done that. We should trying to seed experimentation. This is a system thats thats in many ways ossified, stuck, you know, a very conservative. But it have experience at least a degree of flexibility. And id like people come away from the book knowing that that thats possible. And we could be generating a quite a bit more of it than we are currently. What are your thoughts on and of scale . So how would we take these Lessons Learned from relatively small Police Departments and, implement them in a place like new york city or even on the state level where you are kind of, you know, interacting with multiple municipalities within, an officers jurisdiction . Yeah, thats a great question. You know, i will say one of the cities that i initially was going to include was was new orleans, which was a very different case, a much larger Police Department, and came to its changes through a different pathway namely a federal consent decree, which has been ongoing for for some years now. And there the department had managed to make some cultural changes. It wasnt clear how deep. Those ultimately went and and there were transparency issues for me with access that wasnt granted. And that was a condition for me into one of these agencies i had to be able to talk to over. I wanted and, you know, pull whatever kind of data i wanted. You know, i think this the scale issue is huge. Its important to bear in mind that like 90 of american Police Departments are very small, but still, its the case that, you know, big agencies like nypd, chicago, early sort of, you know, millions and millions of people and so the question of how you get cultural change in a large Bureaucratic Organization is a tough one. One of the findings of the book are one thing that really stood out as i spent time in these three departments was how much cultural change depended on some degree of trust between. The officers, command staff and the chiefs, you know, in places like longmont, for example, the chief really had a radically different for what policing was like. At first, officers scoffed at, he had to say and certainly didnt want to have anything to do with Restorative Justice. But it was only because of trust in that chief that they eventually sort of moved along with what he had to say. The same was true in stockton. A larger where the police chief there didnt go in as a reformer. He went in with the goal of of tamping down violence in the wake of the financial crisis and found that the only way he could do that is if he did some work to generate more trust between the police and the and that required cultural change in the Police Department. But that in stockton, chief eric jones had the trust of his officers. He had the trust of the union that went along with them because he had been proven to be, you know, a guy from their point of view, had always been fair with officer discipline, had always gotten him the kind of equipment that that they needed. So part of the problem with of scale is do you create those bonds of of trust between Police Leaders and, you know, many, many officers . How do you do that in new york . How do you do that in a place like like boston . I think one potential answer is to devolve some of the responsibility for change and for innovation to the level precincts so that can have precinct commanders who in effect, serve the role that the Police Chiefs in my book do who pursue a new approaches to policing, who listen the community and you know decide that, you know, an appropriate model of policing for for for this neighborhood be you know, x, y or z that requires that chiefs at the top of large agencies relinquish control, which is very hard for them to do, given the political pressures that theyre under. It also requires that that they put in place great people, because it means that those precinct commanders would have a lot of power to shape how the department proceeds. But i think thats one potential answer more generally. You know, i think we need a lot more resources that doesnt mean dramatically expanding money for Law Enforcement. But i think that we would do well to expand grantmaking at the state and federal toward agencies that are trying to experiment with culture that are that are trying to move police in in a more humane and professional, effective direction. We have some grants along lines now. Thats been true for a while. We could certainly expand that. And i think that, you know, that money could be useful in answer to the question of, you know, how you scale up. I know we want to we want to open it up and a few minutes here, i if you could just talk about how your experience as a Police Officer. I mean, youre the opening scene is of the book is is riveting. I know after that scene you kind of to the background and we dont hear much about your experience as an officer but maybe you could just give us a few insights as to whether that experience or the degree to which that experience informed the book, whether was your motivation for writing the book how that kind of affected your interpretation, what you heard . Thanks. You know, policing has changed a lot in in in the period from when i served as a cop for a very short time in the early nineties until today. You know, we didnt have a computer like as they were just starting to get computers in cars back then. It was it just a very different world. Theres no gps. You had to memorize maps of, the city. But some things havent changed. The the texture of police work is very similar. Responding to people in distress or who are in a state of kind of heightened aggravation and potential violence. That doesnt change dealing with people whove been victimized. Property crimes are minor crimes that thats very similar. So when i started doing the research for this project and spent time with with officers. There was a degree of familiarity that that i had with the job. I dont think that lent any let any of the officers to think i was anything other than a professor. I mean, they clearly knew i wasnt a cop and i was recording everything they were saying. So you know, they well aware of what was going on. But i think maybe it lent a degree of a slight degree of comfort to them the sense that theres a lot of concern, the police that the media kind of doesnt tell their story. Fairly they feel as though only bad are portrayed in the media never good ones and i think they held out some hope that the account would be maybe more more more balanced in their view, because id been in Law Enforcement, you know, i tried very hard to in writing the book to remain the sociologist throughout and to keep my you know sense of of of things after side. But i think that that that for me lent a degree of of of entry into the police world that i think i might not have had otherwise. But yeah, im going to use my prerogative. Ask one more question and then then well go to q a. So i, i teach in a students who are studying public policy. And one of the regular arguments that i into with them is, is kind of policy versus shift, you know which which should we be focusing, which is, you know, what direction does that as a causality go . And i think that, you know, you a very compelling case that you know policy at least the policies that weve been trying are not working to the extent that we would hope there would because theyre running up against really an entrenched and powerful culture. And i would like to offer an alternative hypothesis here where. So you know you kind of rightly mentioned that, you know, there are many skeptic of Police Reform consider myself one of them because you know seeing the organization kind of inherently racist but i would offer that theres another in group of people is kind of overlapping perhaps that in a distinguish between an institution that designed to fight crime that has a racism problem from an institution that was designed construct and patrol the concept of race through the guise of criminal prosecution, fighting crime. And, you know, i, you know, were in a straying into more and heady topics here but i would love hear your thoughts on this more and of Metta Institute and a barrier potentially to changing. Yeah i think its a its a great question and and one that ive thought about a lot you know i guess as a as a a sociologist, my answer is that institutions are are hard to change. But over the course of time can and do change. And often in ways that are very, very from their origins. So if you think about the institution of higher education, for example, you know, its its initial function and was was not the function that it serves today. The clientele it served was dramatic different its its sensibilities, its exclusions were very different from today. Im not comparing the two institutions in terms their substance, but institutions can evolve in better and and you know the premise of book deep my belief is that theres really no choice. Police departments going anywhere. You know it may it may come to be at some point that that policing will be abolished or eliminated. That doesnt seem likely. It seems extremely unlikely that that will happen anytime soon. And so, you know, the best we can do is to do whatever we can to make those institutions run. Professionally as equitably they can, humanely and. And change can happen. You know. La grange is an interesting case. Again, republic and police chief, there just retired very department. If you look at data on racial inequalities, traffic stops. They are far less there than in most Police Departments and in agencies that that are comparable in size and in and in that the population demographics that they serve. So they havent eliminated racial in traffic stops but have significantly reduced them. And that is an important change to make. So know my hope is that as we have these heavy conversations about what the future of policing of criminal justice looks like that we wont forget the vitally important job of of doing our best to the institutions we have as effective as possible because you know millions and millions of people are being served or ill served them and their lives can be concretely improved with with changes that are entirely within our power to make. Great. So we have a mike that we. Yes. Sure. Yeah. Sam, well bring the mic here. I just. Well, for the for the. Yeah. For the viewers at. Thank you. Can can you comment on the discrepancy at least assume theres a big between the. Vulnerability of american Police Officers to two fatal to themselves being killed by you know an offender or somebody that they are trying to arrest or take into custody. Their their beliefs about that propensity and the actual rate because i mean i i mean its probably a very mundane but its its. So if you could if you could comment and and if bringing the perception in line with the facts which i imagine are just maybe an order of magnitude. Would that one small part of of solving the culture issue. So thats a great question. You know, police have always this country have always thought of their jobs as incredibly dangerous. There are studies that i briefly touch on in the book dating back to the fifties and sixties that show to be a really central part of the police subculture and policing is dangerous. I mean, theres the theres the fatal assault piece it. But but beyond that you know many many Police Officers are are assaulted nonfatal in the course of their jobs. You know that said humans not very good at assessing risk and and culture can magnify poor assessments. And so i one of the things that, you know, we see in american policing is that while it is a risky job and of course, officers need do what they can to take themselves to, make sure that they stay safe. There is a disconnect between the degree to which they perceive themselves to be in constant mortal danger at all times and the degree to which they actually are. I think one way of countering that is to change the kinds of trainings that officers another way, i think, is to get officers to have more interactions with people in the community who are just regular citizens. Remember having a conversation a few years ago with an officer in the town we live, which is this, you know, college town in maine. And and he didnt live in the community. And he came in only at night. And he said, you know, i dont know how you can live there. Its such a dangerous place. And its like, what are you talking about . Its, you know, a college town town. But thats the case for many officers. They only interact with people that they deal with on calls who, as many people have said, you know, are often having the worst day of their lives. So another way to counter that perception of threat is to have many regular interactions between cops and citizens. Thats helpful. The last thing ill mention is, is efforts at making the culture of policing be about something else. One of the things i describe in the la grange chapter is the work of a chief deck. Ma there in apologizing for his departments role in a in a lynching, had taken place in 1940. And this was something that he did after. There was a really concerted effort in the community at building bridges across racial divides. There have been a kind of Racial Trust Building effort that came together through activist groups and Civic Leaders and more, ended up taking part in the apology emerged out of that. But thats sort of the function of slightly altering the culture of the department. Its collective memory. Now, wasnt just, you know, where the cops are, the ones who who have been killed. And we have to celebrate and remember those whove been killed. It was also now a recollection that, you know, in the past, cops have real harm to people and that part of the culture and the legacy of policing as well. So i think countering that is important. Again, i would just emphasize, though, policing is is and remains a dangerous occupation. But just just to add, i mean, so very few officers are killed. Its you know, 50 per year, its nowhere near as dangerous as being a roofer. Yeah, its not in the top ten list. Thats right. And officers are also sometimes think that the only that is a source of danger to them is is is being shot or killed when, you know, in fact, traffic accidents are a major source of of of of injury and loss of life. Certainly, covid was that was that was enormous. So the Risk Assessment is often is often not quite not quite right. Oh, i just want to say thank you first for your read it the reading in the excerpt you read was amazing and really appreciate you being here. Thank you. So i guess my question was about positionally and positionally of change or culture change and how do Police Chiefs or if theres examples of culture change that like further down the chain of command . Like if theres departments or sergeants that see the change necessary or the to make that change and then influence the chief or. Does the chief have all the power in redefining infrastructure redefining what you mentioned as like the aggressive need to evil. But yeah, thats my question about this analogy. Yeah, its another great question and i think the answer is that it on how the chief runs their department so lamar is a great example of that so the chief mike butler was very influenced by Police Reform named herman goldstein, who made the case that Police Departments shouldnt be as hierarchical as they are, that other paramilitary organizations. But to the extent that they are run as as kind of fully military organizations, fully military hierarchies, then it limits the potential of lower ranking officers to come up with suggestions will actually be beneficial. So so butler decided that that was going to run the organization that way. He would have meetings about things in the department. Everybody be invited to. Every meeting except the most confidential about ongoing cases, including the janitorial staff. If if the of the department, if that was relevant to them and people would make suggestions, how can we run things differently . And it resulted in a major change and you know i some time in those chapters of the book on profiling to Domestic Violence detectives in longmont and not all Police Departments of that size have dedicated domestic units. Those that do are often better able to serve victims better able to successfully prosecute offenders. Long one didnt have anything like a domestic dedicated Domestic Violence unit. Although butler was very concerned with it until a Patrol Officer came to one of these meetings and said, you know, im noticing that most of our Domestic Violence cases dont get much follow up from detectives. Maybe we should change and do something about it. And eventually that evolved into a dedicated unit part patrol, and then part of the detective bureau. And, you know, citizens are now better served because of that. So allowing that innovation to bubble up from bottom of the organization, from the middle of the organization is crucial. Important. And i will say, among other things, that requires a degree of jobs, security for chiefs. You know, most chiefs in big city departments are there for a short time. Theyre under tremendous political to bring about changes right away. They might take lessons from from the Community Input from the but but if they dont make those changes know theyre out in a sense dont give the space to lower ranking officers too to see what you know what some good ideas, what might work, what might work. So insulating chiefs from political so that they can actually have the time and space to change their organizations is a really important part of the of the reform story. Thank you. I think well probably take two questions at the same time and you can answer you can answer them both or youre dealers choice. Sure. Yeah. Yes. Thank you. I look forward to reading the book in the introduction. You mention i forgot which one of the three apartments was, one in which the change seemed be facilitated by the fact that Younger Generations of Police Officers and the department. I was wondering if you could speak to any differences youve seen in either willingness to accept or willingness to embark on a new approach to policing among the younger cohorts, Police Officers . This divide between older cops and new cops. Yeah, you speak to that a little bit. Yeah. I thank you so much. Its interesting to hear a cop perspective. I have a few questions on black. So one would be i havent heard anything about Police Unions. How Police Unions prevent policy prevents you know, reform prevents introspection, prevents you know, me as a taxpayer or having any say in how policing actually operates. So i do think its taxation without representation. Thats one. Two, i have a question from my Instagram Live feed here. He noticed in one particular Police Precinct that they train the officers on the perception of guilt and if they perceive the person to be defensive then they go. Aha. And then it ratcheted up theres no deescalation that happens. They if they perceive any type of defensiveness hence you know when you hear black people oh you know the talk with the children did, you did did you did put your hands up did you you know, did you do all these things which again precludes, foods. You know, its you who has to prove and deescalate to this cop whos already escalated. But you as a person has to deescalate. Cop three. I find that you know when you think about training, its like because i do diversity training. And so i do implicit. Implicit by to do all these things right. So its like learning and unlearning. Right. So im like, well, in White Communities policing is flawed, but its not deadly. You know, im saying so its not its not that dont know how to deescalate. Thats not the issue. The issue is race. And if black people paying taxes which we do even though we were enslaved or we still pay taxes to the system, then were literally funding our own demise. So again, im still very as to, you know, what actually is stopping Police Reform from happening is systemic racism. Is it the Police Unions . Is it lobbying because the federal government doesnt have much oversight or much teeth . Like we had a black president. You waited until mike brown 2014. You were ele in 2008. You know, im just adding up the math here and im just, you know, at a loss. So this is black issues. Issues. This is what i do. Im really excited to hear the answers. Thank you. You know, ill do my best to sort combine the questions if i can, because i think there are actually important overlaps there. And so ill talk about the union piece first because i think it speaks in part to this question of younger officers. You know, unions are democracies. They may not always be as as effective democracies, but but they are democracies. Union members vote on what to do and who to be elected as president. And the composition of unions change. Those unions can take different directions. So stockton is the example of the city that that i mentioned, where a Younger Generation came in. And this happened because. The city underwent a really significant budget crisis after the financial crisis and lost about a quarter of its police force. And they had to slowly, over the course of the next years, hire more officers. So the officers they hired were were were typically younger. Now, thats a problem in itself because hire cops much too young in this country. But but those younger officers had, you know, i think a different a different take on things than some of their older they were at least some of them were more amenable to reform and they and partially as a result of this a union head came power in the stockton Police Officers association, who was open to what he thought of as progressive policing. And he didnt mean by that politically progressive policing but he meant, you know, policing that was improved and better. And so when chief jones got behind procedural justice, the Police Officers union followed him. I think that would have been a tough change to make in the absence of a change in the composition of departments. But that also depends on how you recruit. Some departments now are explicitly recruiting officers who are there to change. I think the recruiting motto in detroit right now is, is be the difference. And so who you hire, you know, can affect the role of unions. I think unions are a really significant to change. I think that there are policy answers. You know, we may want to pursue at the state level. There in the interim, i think its essential get chiefs in place who can, you know, be very, very savvy and strategic their negotiations with unions and push them to accept whatever reforms are possible. Because i think in the absence of that, itll be know hard, hard, too hard to move around in la grange, georgia. Change was possible in because theres no union. Georgias one of the states that that that prohibits collective bargaining for Police Officers. So. So chief doug marr, he first took took the helm he could fire officers who had sustained complaints against them without without much difficulty. You know, so, you know i think thats something that that that certainly we need to think about as we move forward with the reform agenda and to come back to jacobs question earlier. I think its both policy and culture, right . Sometimes you need the policy stuff to open up. You need the policy to open up space for for cultural change. On on the question about suspicion and whether, you know, police are trained to respond to people differently if theyre acting suspiciously. I think that that that is the case in some communities. And, you know, certainly thats something that that better training can can address. Ill just add one point in closing here. Thats little bit counterintuitive. In la grange, georgia. This officer that i spent a lot of time with and got to know, robby hall. During kind of right before covid got very, very into jujitsu and a number of officers there did. And he, you know, had just turned 40. He needed a way to kind of take care of himself. And he quickly came to recognize that if he knew how to physically respond to people when necessary in ways that would him to take them into custody safely without having to use an impact, without having to use his gun that that would be of benefit to him. And you know, one thing i think that were seeing in country is that among the training that we need to be talking is getting officers much better and much more defensive Tactics Training because it is often the case that youll have officers who, you know, they dont get training except for the academy. Maybe theyll get for a couple of weeks, a year and know they encounter a situation on the street where they get into a fight and all they can think to do is draw their gun, whereas, you know, ive seen robbie hall, you know, someone pulls a knife and ive seen him just, you know, take, take, take down that person using, his body and his hands. So i think thats another kind of reform training. We would be wise to encourage on the part of the police doesnt quite get to the suspiciousness part. But you know there are certainly nonlethal means that are available to the police. And the more we can do to encourage cops see those as a as a key part of their toolkit. The safer our communities will be. I would say one more thing. I would i was also stop and frisk. I was a masters student, so i was 21 years old and was just pretty much like this. And a navy blue van tinted. I had no idea. Pulled up onto the sidewalk and the doors to open. I swore i was going to be a victim of such trafficking like that. So the fear to movements. How stop and frisk happened. Its insane. So this notion of in in black communities presumption, guilt like it even happens in people who look like me, who are actually masters for for being a Teaching Fellow like yeah, yeah that that thats what my tax are funding. Yeah. I think theres much larger conversation to be had here about, about, you know, much more focused forms of policing that, that imet, you know, going after people who you intelligence indicates really are involved, serious criminal activity and basically leaving else alone. You know, we we try that in some communities. They tried that very unsuccessfully. Obviously, in in memphis. But you know, where it can be done done well. I mean, i think that represents also a significant advancement in public safety. Thank you, neal. Thank you, pat. And all of you for coming