In the head. It was not even frontpage news. There was nobody demonstrating like this. Children in black six months killed on our streets. No one is demonstrating about that. No one is having discussions about what we can do to combat it. Officerwhite police shoots one black person and we know the name of that person, memorials are developed for them, and they become the cause of a movement to solve the problem. I am just asking for some proportionality. Lets put our time and energy focused on the largest problem we have, and that is those deaths internally. There is nothing white people can do externally to help us. It is a problem internal to us. We must address it. But in order to address that, we have to acknowledge the importance of it. Right now, it does not seem to be important. The only time we get upset is when a white person takes a black persons life. Host we will hear from doreen. Shes in massachusetts. Caller when i watched the video of george floyd, i was totally disgusted, could not believe Something Like that could happen, and thought she had have and thought he should have been arrested immediately. And did not understand why he , and why he was not charged with firstdegree murder. And that was with totally, completely Democrat Administration in that area. More so thats tensions could inflame, violence could iraq violence could erupt. My question is, on the black lives matter, when they first started, that group three or four years ago, back with Michael Brown and other cases that cops killed in unarmed black man, and that whole hands started alloot these protests. The mayor of baltimore i am not sure if it was the michael said case came out and for the police to stand back and let the citizens destroy, which caused all this chaos in that city. Burning cars, looting, and everything else. We watched it live on tv. Host what would you like our guest to address . These cases with black lives matter back then was investigated by the obama administration, by eric holder, a black attorney general, and found those officers were not guilty. Hands up, do not shoot did not happen. It was alive. A lie. Guest i think she is right. We need to be honest in these kinds of cases. I go back to my point why are we discussing it and making it a major cause for demonstrations and ignoring the more pers 8 the more pervasive problem of black on black violence . The Robert Woodson is at woodson center. Cspans washington journal, every day we are ,aking your calls on the air and we will discuss policy issues that impact you. This morning, we look at policing during the covid19 pandemic and nationwide civil the president of the International Association of chiefs of police. We will talk about Race Relations in america with naacp president derek johnson. Watch cspans washington journal, live at 7 00 a. M. Eastern this morning. And joined a discussion with your phone calls, facebook comments, Text Messages and tweet. S. Coming up on tuesday, on cspan, politico with new jersey governor murphy. At noon we go to texas for the funeral of george floyd who died in Police Custody in minnesota. At 2 30 p. M. The Senate Finance committee on the cares act during the pandemic. The Senate Returns to resume consideration of legislation to Fund National parks. And on cspan3, the Senate HomelandSecurity Committee holds a hearing on federal government buying and distribution strategies in response to covid19. Is elie mystal of the nation, serves as their justice correspondent. You have probably seen many protests over the years on these related matters of violence by the police and what race relation issues, what makes this different than others, in your mind . Guest it is a good question. My first one of these is sean bell, cops emptied 19 bullets into a man the night before his wedding. That was my first kind of experience with this at the street level activity. A problem in america for a long time. The difference right now that i a, there is two, are objectively more white people involved in the protests. That is just an objective fact. I think that is objectively positive. Yesterday i saw mitt romney say black lives matter. Not black corporations matter, black lives matter, which made me clutch a pearl. I was like, whoa. I think the racial integration and racial harmony of these protests is something we have not really seen since mainline Civil Rights Era march on washington. I think that is great. The second thing that i would distinguish from other again, this happens a lot that is may different now is the kind of intensity of the specific harm, right . This is not like we need to hold hands and sing kumbaya. This is we need to get your foot off our next. There is focus and intensity there. I think it is one of the reasons it is making so much news and raising so much awareness. Host everybody involved in this, they want to see some type of end result. What is the end result . Guest i like to focus on the positive victories that have been achieved. Andk chauvin was arrested his three accomplices were arrested. I do not believe that these four cops would have been arrested without these protests. So the protesters have already achieved a victory. In terms of further victory, in terms of more action, i think we have seen already some of the city mayors start to make changes, start to reassess their relationship with the police. You were talking about this a little bit, these are local concerns. Policing is a local issue. So many of these cities, we have democratic mayors who, despite being allegedly liberal and allegedly progressive, have this very aggressive posture when it comes to policing. They are in the pocket, you could argue, of policing there they have not rogan free. I think one of the specific goals we are starting slowly to see is city mayors starting to think differently about controlling their Police Forces. I think that would be a great victory Going Forward from these protests. Host for the talk of this funding police, partial budget funding,ding dis dismantling the police, do you think partial results are possible . Guest it is interesting. Or,le talk about disfunding i use the word, disarming the police. It is hard to say we are not going to have any cops and that man will protect us. We are not talking about a lawless situation. What we are talking about is decreasing the budgets we talk about decreasing military spending in this country. [indiscernible] is the point of the defunding movement. Do i think it will have longterm effects . I will say this, nothing else has worked. This is not a new problem, not something people figure out two minutes ago, two weeks ago, two years ago. This has been a longterm, systemic problem in america for my entire life, and i am 42 years old, and much of my mothers entire life, and she is much older than me. So Community Policing has not worked. Electing democrats and electing progressive mayors has not worked. What is supposed to work, right . So you get the defunding from the position of nothing has worked so far. I dont know longterm if that is something that people are ready to really kind of walk into intellectually, but pushing towards taking away some of the polices voice the militarization toys would be helpful. Host elie mystal joining us for this conversation. Eastern and00 central time zones. Mountain and pacific time zones, 202 7488001. Law enforcement, 202 7488002. You can tweet us, cspanwj. And you can text us at 202 7488003. Talk about your point about appealing to white people. Guest i, like pretty much every black person i know, has spent a significant amount of time these past two weeks fielding calls and Text Messages and well wishes from white friends who want to help, who have seen how bad things are and are becoming aware and wanted to know how they can get involved or help my life. You know, i try to take it positively. In lowe once famously said west wing, ignore the fact but you are in a party ignore the fact that you showed up at all. It is difficult. This is not news. I have had white people said to me over the past few weeks, wow, elie, i used to think you were extreme, but now it seems you were kind of right about the cops. Yeah, yeah, i have been, and i have been for a long time. So my goal is to say, like, look, i am glad that now you are awakening to this problem, but what i need you to do, as opposed to reaching out to me, as opposed to trying to see if i need a cookie, if i need a fruit basket, right, i need to to go out there in your own networks where i am not invited, where my voice is not heard, where i am not allowed to speak to them, and you do that work. You sound like me when you are hanging out with your only white friends. You sound like me when youre hanging out with your family at thanksgiving. Because this has been a longterm problem and aggressively combating Police Brutality and the racism that leads to Police Brutality is a fulltime job that africanamerican people, that black people in this country, do everyday. And if you are white and you want to help, then you have to make that part of your fulltime job, to stamp out or at least challenge racism and oppression wherever you see it. Because as a white citizen, you are going to be allowed into rooms, lot into conversations where people of color simply are not going to be there, so you have to be the advocate. You have to be my ally in that moment, not just overtaxeds or twitter not just over texts or twitter. Host the idea of systematic racism within the department, you can look at specific instances like george floyd, but what other metrics do you look at if you make that case if, indeed, you do make that case . I do not want to speak for you. Stops here that they get all because back to stops. It is partially my Legal Training coming through. Once the state has you and puts their hands on you, and i mean cops, agents of the government, once they put their hands on you , then anything can happen. Anything can go wrong. Whether it is racism bias, just anything can go wrong. What we need to do is decrease the time and the ability of the state to put their hands on you. When you look at stops, stops have always been incredibly, overwhelmingly racially biased. Seems like it was like eight years ago like, three months ago, Mike Bloomberg was trying to run for president. Black people were like, i am not having that. Why . Because Mike Bloomberg was johnny on the spot when it came to he thought it was a good idea, and it is actually the worst possible idea. If police do not stop you, they cannot kill you. So when we talk about systemic bias in the system, the need to force police to show us they have probable cause for a stop that goes beyond he was black and looked like he was doing something, that has to be priority number one. Priority number two has to be of what ise veil called qualified immunity, which basically means if a cop was doing something in the line of duty, he cannot be sued, which gives the cops impunity to commit crimes while in the line of duty. We have to make cops pay and make them be held accountable for violations they commit while doing their work. ,f we start at those two things i think that is, honestly, a quicker way to get at the underlyings estimate bias in the system as opposed to focusing only on what is called post custodial treatment. What we saw with george floyd was post custodial treatment. What was with eric garner was post custodial treatment. I am trying to get to the point where cops are not putting people in custody in the first place. Host first call is from vicki in chicago. You are on with our guest elie mystal of the nation. Go ahead. Caller hi, yes, i just want to say that i think it is really sad that people do not trust the police. I love the Police Officers we have. I believe they have done a terrific job. I think it is just disgraceful the way these criminals have torn down our city. And i do not respect criminals would go and loot and tear down. And i cannot believe they have the out that they have the nerve to talk about defunding the police when the Police Protect us and save our lives. It is a disgrace. Thank you. Know. Yeah, well, i i do not trust police. I never have. I am always more worried and most situations, i am more worried about the cops than the alleged criminal activity. And the reason why that is, because we have laws against crime, right . We have a system of government that says certain things are bad. You cannot rob me. You cannot mug me. Right . We do not seem to have laws against police crime. Police are allowed to, as i was just talking about, stop me for no reason. Police are allowed to restrict my movement and restrict my access on trumped up charges. Police are allowed to beat me and shoot me. That is not ok. That is the fundamental kernel of why i do not trust my police, because my police operate above the law. Right . And i cannot begin to trust somebody who does not operate within the bounds of society and of the law. I am sure that is not going to be our first call suggesting that what is really happening right now is just a bunch of criminals looting, so i do not want to go too far down that rabbit hole. But i will simply say that the vast majority of protesters have been peaceful and respectful, and if you think about what they are protesting, if you think about the kind of, the pain and illegalities that they are protesting, the fact that 90 of them, that 95 of them, perhaps 98 of them have been completely lawabiding is a miracle. It is a miracle that so many people have been so respectful given what we are dealing with. Host from maryland, renee is next. Hi. I think that we are focusing all the attention of the police and what they need to do, but the black community has a lot of work to do, too. We all do. You know, the thing is, i do not believe this is a racist issue. We are making it one. There are 13 of our population that are black people. They commit 53 of violent of murders, and 60 of all the robberies. We have to focus on crime, too. Their side has to focus on crime. The police have to focus on, force. Cessive but nobody is talking about both sides having work to be done. And if black lives matters, it starts with black abortions and white abortions, all abortion. All killing. More blacks kill blacks. How can we make black lives matter when blacks do not make black lives matter . Host ok. Mr. Mystal . Elie mystal . The signal seems to be a bit frozen, so we will attempt to reconnect. Guest can you hear me . Host yes, go ahead. Sides,there are not two alright . There is one side, that is the american side. Well,ller tried to say, the black people have to work on their side no, no, no. The american citizens have a sidedness, right . The other side, the other people in this, are not two different groups of american citizens. They are american citizens who all should enjoy a certain level of respect and right and freedom, and the state, the state government, the armed agents of the state which have to follow a certain set of rules, and when those armed agents of the state follow those ands in a biased fashion beat out justice tearfully depending on the color of an american citizens skin, that becomes the problem. That becomes the only problem worth talking about. As i said earlier, we have laws against crime, laws against robbery, laws against property robbery. Oss against all right . What we need are to have those laws looked at fairly, and when the armed agents of the state refused to fairly meet out justice, then we have we, all, including renee, have a societal problem. It is a problem for black people, and it is a problem for americans. Host bob and marilyn, your next. In maryland, you are next. Caller i have two comments for the gentleman. First, my sense is that racism, as you are terming it, sort of looks like this for the police. They are trained down in inner cities. They have all kinds of experiences. And each time they are walking , lets black gentleman say 90 of the time there is a problem, lets say even 80 of the time there is a problem, what about 70 or 60 . Racism starts to become probability. And so they walk up to a gentleman, they are already on guard, because 60 of the time there has been a problem, as renee just said and you just much more percentage of Violent Crimes are accomplished by black people. So take some culpability with all this. Host ok, lets take that point and let our guest respond. Guest lets see, where do i start . Black people do not commit more crimes. If that is what you are arguing, black peoplearm are arrested more often for the crimes, which shows the bias. Arrestedut who gets for what, not who commits what that is number one. Number two, we can go through a rabbit hole of longterm that manifestues in crime rates. That is a longer discussion that i do not want to have at this moment. Number two, to your point about how police are always on guard and that is racism. That is complete and utter nonsense. It is nonsense to argue that Police Walked to a black person and 90 of the time there is a problem, maybe 60 of the time there is a problem are you insane . Right . Tching mtv, stop watching violent movies that make you think that 60 of the like people you meet Walking Around a part of the problem here youre talking at best around 10 of the time there is a custodial problem that would lead to some kind of actionable crime. If youre telling me that police, because of their training and their experiences and whatever have gotten to the point where racism seems, as they caller said, like a probability situation to them, we have a solution to that. We use it in the army. We take people off the front lines after they have been there for too long because we know they basically lose their training. Right . We understand that we cannot have deployed troops for an indefinite amount of time because even the best trained soldier will crack. Best, what we are seeing with our police, and i think it is far worse, but at best what were seen with our police is an over deployment. We are seeing the Police Officers who have ignored their training, who have lost their training, who have lost the plot of the story because they have been deployed on the front l