department and really talk about how violence, and going out with this warrior mentality that so many officers do, sometimes show up in. it can be problematic and lead to these deadly situations like the nichols case. then we want our police off of a roar mentality? they are going out to fight, obviously dangerous criminals. you know a lot about culture. what can they do in this police department if it s clearly rotten? first of all, i would hesitate to paint with a white brush and say every cop in memphis is bad. where every cop anywhere is bad. we have five bad cops here. that could only exist in a culture that allowed that kind of moral corruption to exist. so, there is a problem there. i m sure they re many good police officers and memphis. these specialized units in a city that is beset with crime, like memphis, has put many cities are. can be highly effective, and properly run. promptly run means careful selection process.
the other thing you hinted at is this warrior mentality of seeing the public as always threatening to kill you. and coming at the public at least certain people in the public, particularly black and brown folks, as if they re deadly, but police kill far more people than ever hurt them. the statistics are just extremely lopsided. so police killed 1,096 people and no one should be killed on either side of this, but 1,096 to 64. it s not as if police are constantly being killed. but the training makes it seem like every encounter is a deadly one in theory, right? yes, and i think that we also put we categorize our training. so we will put behavioral health training in one little category and we do that for six hours of a 400-hour training, and then we ll have use of force
you do, and five black officers, as you do, certainly racism has nothing to do with this case, and i think that that is not right. what you have to begin to look at is if the overwhelming number of victims of police abuse are black in memphis, as they are, as disproportionate, as they are, then racial bias is a factor. how could that possibly be? it s because the culture of policing. there are certain neighborhoods where they are a warrior mentality. this is a war zone. you have to do what you ve got to do, you have to jump out. in other neighborhoods the same police department treats with a servant mentality, with a protector mentality. if those two mind-sets line up with this is a poor black community, we are a war zone, we will be warriors, we will do whatever we have to do and the affluent white communities we re going to protect people, then you wind up with racial profiling, racial violence, even when the cops are black.
new fallout from the death of tyre nichols in memphis. let s get back to our experts for more analysis. van, you write a very compelling article on cnn.com in which you write this, and let me quote from your article. it is the race of the victim who is brutalized, not the race of the violent cop, that is most relevant in determining whether racial bias is a factor in police violence. tell our viewers what that means. what matters most, what you re suggesting here? what i m suggesting is some people are saying because you have a black police chief, the majority of the police on the force are black, five black cops, there s no racial bias here at all. that s not the right way to look at it. the way you look at it is, does this police department tend to single out black people in black neighborhoods for this type of behavior. i think you ll find in memphis that is overwhelmingly true. you can have a police department that in one neighborhood has a warrior mentality and anything
say to people, you either live in fear of crime or live in fear of the police. it shouldn t be a binary choice. wolf, i want to say i agree so much, i thif it s a combination not only with what van is saying about the way black males are treated, but to van s point about the warrior and protector, that s where you see the difference. we have to tamp down on the warrior mentality. it s not just militarization in terms of the equipment. it s the culture and mentality that they re aware with the populous. you see the enormous rage in that video. over what? there s a notion of being very amped up and angry, whether it s through screening or training. john, let me get your thoughts. could disbanding this scorpion unit be part of the solution here? it will certainly take some of the pressure off.