Since the death of george floyd in Police Custody last month, we have seen nationwide unrest and protests not only here in america, but internationally. And weve also seen a certain narrative take hold. It starts with the assumption that the only way to properly view george floyd staff is through a racial lens. In fact all encounters with police and black suspects are increasingly viewed this way. Its a narrative that assumes the behavior of typical Police Behavior towards black suspects and shows george floyd as a black family man in america that have happened and happens to black people all the time. That they leave the house each day parade about a violent encounter with police. The media has run with this narrative, which faces very little pushback and very little skepticism. And it leaves us with the impression that the biggest problem facing black America Today are in fact the police. About Law Enforcement i is at te root of social inequality in america. And so, we find ourselves in the middle of a National Conversation about policing. There are calls to defund the police and abolish prison. There is legislation being discussed in congress that would make it easier to prosecute cops and fire them. We have armed radicals that have taken over entire neighborhoods of a major city like seattle. That includes policing that has been abandoned and they have the mayors blessing and doing so. They are commentators not only making excuses for the rioting but indeed cheering it on to a large extent. So, whats going on here, and that is the point of this event today. Weve invited some analysts to talk about that and particularly interested in what they have to say because they fall within that Demographic Group in whose name of this is happening that is young men of color. They are supposed to be the biggest beneficiaries of whats being advocated in the wake of george floyd staff. So lets get to the panelists. I will introduce the them then e can get started with questions at first we have jamil jivani a graduate of Yale Law School and author of the book why young men are dangerous allure of the Violent Movement and what we can do about it and i hope we get the chance to talk about that book. The next panelist is rafael mangual, Deputy Director of legal policy at the Manhattan Institute and has written widely on urban crime and policing and the criminal Justice System in general. And finally, we have Coleman Hughes who has just recently joined the Manhattan Institute and is a graduate of columbia university. Hes testified before congress about slavery reparations and hes written widely about race or any number of publications including the New York Times and the wall street journal. Lets get started with the questions, gentlemen. I thought i would start with you, rafael. Its a basic question a lot of people assume, but i wanted to get your take and that is do we know that the george floyd and counter with police was racially motivated and that it happened because he is black and if not, why have so many people jumped to that conclusion . It sounds like a simple question but i think the answer is pretty complicated. The short answer is no, i dont think that we can make that assumption because as far as ive seen, theres no evidence that there is a racial animus which were reprehensible that the reason so many people have assumed that this was racially motivated is because the event fits into a preexisting structure. The structure is built upon the assumption that policing is a system built to perpetuate so when you have a terrible incident of misconduct like the case of george floyd, when the officer is white and the victim is black, the question of motivation is assumed and as to what some of the reasons for that are, i can only speculate. I think one might be the power that weve seen that these narratives can have to drive change and to obscure the facts that get in the way of the change a lot of people are capitalizing on these events. Spinnaker got to ask you the same question, colman. Why do people assume thats a racial incident and do you agree that it might have something to do with setting a narrative of may be some activists or political ties, more progressive commentators want to push. Absolutely. I agree that short answer is we dont know if it was racially motivated. That sounds crazy to people that have been paying attention to the full range of people that get killed by police in this way its worth reminding people that was a man named tony that died in a similar way younger than me of a Dallas Police officer for 13 minutes in 2016 and it was released on video and it didnt spark as much outrage as the george floyd incident, which leads to your question why is it that people view this as something that only happened to black people. The answer lies not in the coverage by it in the media. Dozens of white people come at least a dozen sometimes several dozen get killed by the Police Every Year and those stories just die in the black hole of local news. They never escape and make it National News for people following the new schedule to be perpetually give the false impression that this kind of thing overwhelmingly were only happens to black people. And in many ways it isnt her fault because it is what the National Media has fed them. Then the question becomes why is there that coverage bias in the media. Why have we heard about george floyd but almost nobody knows the name of tony and the answer to that i think has something to do with a understandable i can certainly speak for myself but i think Many Americans were raised watching and re watching the videos of white Police Officers brutally hosin hosing d dissecting the dogs on civil rights protesters in the 60s, peaceful testers. And that kind of molded and in printed in many ways on the countrys moral imagination and almost ingrained in our subconscious. So, when we see a white officer doing something to a black man, it actually hits the American Mind much differently and much more poignantly than if we saw a white officer doing the same thing to a suspect or black officer doing it to a white suspect or black suspect. Jamil, do you agree that the media plays a role in helping people to jump to these conclusions regardless of whether the facets have been laid out, white, black, there must be something fishy going on, what role does the press play in front of leading people to jump to conclusions . Guest certainly they hope to direct our attention in some cases but not others. Part of the reason they have toe control of the narrative is that it is speaking today reality and that is disproportionality and the way that it works in our society. I think when people see george floyd being killed by a Police Officer, it is objecting more likely that they would happen and that alone is a source i think of genuine frustration and concern. I think a lot of people across black america know that they are more likely to have a negative encounter. Why that is the case i think deserves a more nuanced conversation then the media makes space for what we need to acknowledge that is the reality that black people are disproportionately experience in a Law Enforcement in this sort of way. I think the media wants to point a certain explanation. Lets add on to that conversation. Thats part of why we wanted to have this panel. Why are these encounters so much higher than with other groups. Are the Police Taking on and over policing these communities, what explains this disproportionate number of . I think it is the way that its dispersed in the city and this Geographic Area if you live in a majority black neighborhood you are more likely to get exposed to gang violence, drug crime, worry if your kids are going to make it home after going to school or going to a friends house, so you are calling the cops and relying on the cops to provide some sort of stabilizing presence for community safety. And because of that, but people are going to interact with the cops are disproportionately higher rate. Its like prejudice and bias in every other part of life. It into a Violent Crime is distributed is a big part of why the police are having more common interactions with black individuals that matters. Okay. Now, jamil says racism still exists. It could be playing a role here in a way that communities are policed. Congress is right now considering reforms making it easier to fire a cop or prosecute cops. The police are not perfect [inaudible] [inaudible] database for the police to move to another state, joined the chorus in height or background. Just curious what you make of these reforms in general on principle whether you think they are good but more importantly, how much of a difference to you think these reforms will make it comes to getting at the problem jamil was talking about. I think that is kind of the right question before you answer it i think we have to get a realistic picture of how big of a problem Police Violence is. One of the problems as i see it within this broader take is that theres been kind of a toxic narrative thats caught fire particularly in the black community that says as an institution that can be characterized as the unjustifiable use of force. This is false. It is extremely rare and if that is true talking about the lethal force or nonlethal force used is about 0. 03 of all arrests and that is coming from 2018 with 10. 3 million arrests and when it comes to nonlethal force is used in less than 1 . This isnt evident as in largescale problem and that is the sort of first practical limithe first practicallimit the not ; in terms of the difference they can make. That is to say that because the problems we find are so overblown, there just isnt all that much room for improvement. The police have made incredible progress on this front over the last several decades and this is just one of the sort of political problems. Theyve gotten no credit for the. That. 1971 the nypd found 800 times and 222 people and killed almost 100. By 2016, the numbers were down to 72, twentysomething and nine respectively. None of that progress was reflected in the rhetorical posture. So that is a practical limit of any proposal and the politician is going to face to the extent its going to be able to overcome this overwhelmingly powerful narrative. But the second one is that there just isnt a lot of data behind the popular points. I do agree that its been made difficult. I think that reflects real concerns about job security and there are ways around about what we should be talking about. The support for that is a general argument. Its by taking that power away from them, but we have to do that and unfortunately, our conversation right now doesnt allow us to get to that point so i dont have the hop to hope foe potential that these proposals have to make them better. What do you think about that, some of these proposals are calling for collecting more data, better data, sharing more data, for instance the Different Police department collect crime in different ways or data in different ways. There is no central database where they feed the information into in terms of the behavior of the officers and how often they fire their weapons and is a word. There is no uniform way of recording this nationwide. Some of the legislation would move us in that direction. I know that you are a data guy and i like it. We all like to use it but im wondering if that is the problem here when it comes to the narrative and if they had better data, we wouldnt see the narrative pushed out to. Do you think that would change much of the conversation that we are having . I think transparent data makes a lot of sense. Universal body cams. Perhaps changing qualified immunity although i can sort of see both sides of the one. De militarized weapons makes a lot of sense to me. Then there is the question of how much will that addressed the problem of deadly shooting of unarmed americans and hear i am rather pessimistic because i think we are misunderstanding why they have been to begin with. First, the point that the numbers are very low to begin with, and its harder to bring them lower from the low point and to bring them load from a high point. Many of these have been because america is the foremost done country on planet earth, which we plan a cop pulls over the suspect, for example, that cop has a legitimate fear the suspect has a pistol hidden in the compartment. Have a very serious and rational conversation to make Police Departments accountable. The status quo is unacceptable short of shooting someone in the back its very difficult to get punished as a Police Officer in this country. That seems like it has to change but at the same time we have to manage our expectations. I certainly hope we can get to a place we never see george floyd again but i would bet all the money we have we cannot get to a situation that there are deadly shootings and being a gun country. What i think im hearing and i agree with that we shed find ways that is all for the good but at the end of the day preceding doesnt seem to be the central problem that you said before. Which gets me to the question is that the centerpiece of the conversation the right way to g go . With policing is in the central problem, where would you like to see the focus of this conversation . A lot of people are paying attention. If you think we are overemphasizing the role of police and black homicides in this country by every day to measure where should the focus of this conversation be . Ever trying to get cities that they can we invest money from Law EnforcementLike Mental Health and social services and childcare, it is a vicious cycle that requires us to invest more in policing than what might address the core issues and whether they would not simply arrest our way out of. To have a heavy hand on crime. [inaudible] a lot of black americans i work with understand there is a attention there to address the violence in the neighborhoods creating conditions to interact with young man. That is among those who shape the narrative. If you dont have to worry that shooting has happened and what intersection did that take place because my mother lives there then you dont have the value of police on your mind in a regular basis. And then to see the immediate value to have view. So as a Community Group there is a class difference and black lives matter is very out of step on many issues. That was the authentic voice then joe biden wouldnt have wanted the democratic primary. People do want to talk about family there are conservative views on economics with education reform for black families. On the ground we see that as a more complicated conversation. To call it the upperclass that is called the managerial class narrative at the center of the problem. So i have a quick followup. And particularly for young black man but the hiphop culture a day being taught to view the police with suspicion . So the glorification of criminality in pop culture with the expression of young black men that they can embrace criminality on a cultural perspective. So absolutely it is a problem. And those that can address systemic racism when it comes to address seeing criminality. Because its heartbreaking those that make millions of dollars a year and young black men pay the price. Is there a danger with the over focus on policing . In other words not only if the goal is to reduce the number of blacks but is it dangerous . Could there be a backlash among Law Enforcement . How does that play out you have written with cops and have written a lot about policing in urban areas what is the dangerous one the danger to scapegoat Law Enforcement . It leaves the unrealistic impression but these things we saw our regular occurrences as opposed reparations that creating of impressions is indefensible but people actually believe it. There is a poll that found twice as many respondents were worried about becoming victims of gun violence but of the american sociological review but that they are less likely to report crime. So the first danger is it creates a wall between black and brown communities that can be extremely dangerous when people are less likely to cooperate but then as you intimated there is the reality that police could pull back and thats what we have seen happen they just say police are being babies. That would be the right response if the reason for the pullback was the angry go ahead and take care of it yourself approach ive spoken to a few Police Officers the last week and they have all expressed a real sense of insecurity. I dont know what will happen if i approach this guy and i should lower my risk profile and over the long run that thes reforms and the posture that demonizes police will lead to the job physically whiskey if you increase the profession it is by considering other alternative options. And for those who have better alternative options. So what we will do is make policing attractive for those that dont have very many options so the recruiting pool will have those with less iqs less education, and actually might exacerbate the Police Violence program that we have tried so hard to get down and zero. These are real dangers. It is radical and dangerous reform proposals that pursue and the woman killed summer 2018 in chicago brittany hell. Twentyfour years old. Standing in the Street Holding her one yearold daughter. The little girl waved the guy in the passenger seat opened fire and hit Brittany Hill in the torso she fell and collapsed and died in the street that little girl will grow up without a mother. That plays into this discussion because the person charged with her murder michael washington had n