And for standards for Police Training and greater diversity proposals made and in several cases adopted in the wake of numerous other Police Murders including those of eric garner and Michael Brown the Minneapolis Police department for example established a duty to intervene required by Police Officers after the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in ferguson this requirement did not say floyd joining me to discuss the role of the police and what we must do to end the power of police to inflict indiscriminate violence is philip mackerras a writer activist and ph d. Candidate in sociology and africanamerican studies at Yale University so lets begin with a history because its not new we go all the way back to the Johnson Administration and all of the mechanisms and this has been bipartisan that has been used to a step simply reform the police have actually boomerang and made the police more on the potent and more lethal can you take us through that history yeah i mean we can even go back a bit further we think about the origin of modern policing developing as you know the 1st form a slave patrols right that the apparatus of policing was the ballot in in the south in order to protect. The capital in the interest of slave owners and in many ways you know to prevent revolts and prevent people in slave people from trying to freedom and then we see across you know different places in the north policing the merges as a way to protect the interests and capital you know a business owners. And merchants and so when we look over time we definitely see this tight link between capitalism and sort of developing the social control apparatus lyndon b. Johnson in in the mid sixtys passed a Law Enforcement assistance act which became the 1st federal pathway to imbue local policing with more and more resources and as you call the not doing this one crime the Police Officer was a frontline soldier and over time and you know we can we can date back even to that because previously we see that reforms come out of this sort of idea of liberalism but what they do is they create in the view more and more power into the police and into policing which then create this massive apparatus that becomes very difficult and really just increases the capacity of state and police to engage and control and arm this force against black people but not only against but you as we see the protests across the country that police are using violence and you know militarized equipment and tactics in order to really protect police power right to really prevent any kind of protesting and then we see the state also engaging in the criminalization of protestors and you can be out protesting and all of this and then youre being charged with assault on an officer or resisting arrest and you know when there was a case in philadelphia at temple what we saw that someone was being charged with assault on an officer when when you look at the video what was actually happened was that officer would beating the person in the head with a time and another cop was forcing. Their face into the pain with their knee and so you know the one we just mentioned. That if your state assault on a Police Officer which as you correctly point out is interpreted. You know very speciously by the police is a 7 year sentence but i want to go back to you when you talk about liberals because and i ask whether that difference so during the sixtys seventys Johnson Administration is it that the liberal class the liberal elites especially in the Democratic Party were justifying this as opposed to the 1994 crime bill pushed through by clinton and biden where it became their project and you know the attempt to wrest back the law d and order issue or were they before the 1994 crime bill also the architects of increased police power i mean it was its always been a multitude of factors but liberals had been on sort of the forefront for much of the fortys fiftys and the sixtys where you know when johnson is that in many ways that thrust has been odd liberals as well as you know across the political spectrum but when we look from lending in the johnson to the fortys and fiftys with progressive liberal reforms into the ninetys when we look over time. You can you know the part of the. Core engine behind these these these pushes have been largely results of liberals and which is a part of the you know make a distinction then in the 1994 omnibus crime bill where essentially this was a political calculation on the part of the democratic leadership led by joe biden to outlaw in order you know the republicans you see this as a kind of continuity there is a comedy but it is its different in a way because in the sixtys the police in the 1960 that the United States went to play not imposing. In 2018 the number was 137000000000 and so there the rapid growth and increase creates a different context and so. You know it was a different time where policing hadnt had been as the bell and so it was still sort of the early. Days in a way of really developing in channeling resources in the way that we see today and so the context was different because that time was different but they were it was also in many ways linked to the. Movements of the day and sort of capitalizing on this sort of like fear of you know people who are engaging in activism in protests and this and unrest that that National Sentiment and feelings were structured in such a way that it was inclined to be able to say like you know yes we actually do want more more police and so in some ways you cant even link the social unrest and the activism of that time you know from this broader push in some ways its directly linked in many ways well there was a huge push to criminalize not only black people but also any war protesters and there was an attempt to criminalize all forms of dissent you grew up in newark new york city. You know you must have had some contact with. This new form of policing Police Terror i mean we should be clear that since george floyd has been killed on average 3 american citizens almost all unarmed have been murdered by police daily since george floyd was. Strangled to death so talk about your own personal experience and you know kind of what she what youve seen on the streets i mean what what policing looks like it in a in in parts of newark or i guess you were in the bronx you lived in the bronx too as well yeah i mean what people are seeing now is policing is just on camera and its being circulated in this cons where its sort of in the National Attention but violence and let different kinds of Police Violence happen every single day and you know from being very gun on line. Well these were not legitimate that i never had i never accepted the idea that the police were a legitimate situation that could be reformed there was always a sort of position that they were not legitimate and not the per the providers of safety and you know the 1st time i was assaulted by the police i was 13 like my family we can you know different members of my family and theres also just like different legacies that i had known stories of previous generations of people in my family whove been brutalized by the police and so you know and its the bruises and its also people kind of think of the sensational forms but the every day like teles there when im driving i get pulled over i fear that might be the last thing that that kind of structural violence is also from about. And you know that the kinds of people are arrested you know being sort of violence is used in order to you know. Engage with people on an everyday basis that like being arrested for no reason its violent you know in many ways and we can go down the line but the diff theres many different forms of Police Violence that dont always look like the sensation of the killings which is why its so much broader you know and thats why even in these moments where these folks ok lets do lets do it theres no way to actually capture the full extent of violence theres no way that to document it right because we know that one most people dont report. Violence in this kind of that express on behalf of police but also this certain things that you cant capture you cant capture that the adrenaline spike of being pulled over and not knowing if youre going to die right like that thats something that you cant you cant capture that and so you know i think that and the other the other aspect of this is we know that the 2nd most commonly reported Police Misconduct this actually the 3rd which is the message violence 40 percent of domestic 40 percent of police houses experience in message violence and that is likely to be under reported and so those are kinds of violence that when you create this massive institution that basically you know is untouchable and basically you create good guys and bad guys and police are the good guys that would you create is a context in which people can do harm and violence and one of the most important things that have happened which really takes off like in the mid 1900 is the idea that the police are a legitimate institution which is hasnt always been the case for most of this rich was were not seen as the provider isnt sort of stewards of Public Safety it was a wreck its a relatively new idea but that legitimacy then obscures that actual core of what Police Actually do and they did they did violence and control and you know when we look at the statistics for example there was a recent study in the New York Times less than 2 percent of police non one dispatch guards were actually been involved in anything having to do with violence less than 5 percent of arrest in this country you have to do anything with that and thats not to say that we also need to transform how we think about response of violence as a model of policing doesnt work but even what police are trained to do is not actually what we see that they actually do and so the system doesnt work for people in the margins but it doesnt work for the country when we come back well continue our conversation with a. The book. You cant be bold with yet you like. Problem drugs dont always come from unscrupulous dealers but from pharmacies to in every state in the United States we see a very sharp increase in the number of people seeking treatment for addiction to prescription opioids oids invaded america under the banner of medicine persisted with the pain but instead of trying to wean him off though she just goes after dose after dose after dose and really became his drug dealer so whos to blame patients doctors manufacturers or the government. Welcome back to on contact we continue our conversation about policing and Police Reform with philip mackerras. I want to make it clear that this and lets call it what it is Police Terror it it functions the same way lynching functions i remember speaking to the great Theologian James Cone grew up in segregated arkansas he said as a small boy as soon as it got dark he would stand by the window even though he was a child fully cognizant that for a black man to walk down a road in the dark in segregated arkansas meant that is his daddy might never come home and he talks about that trauma as a child and its this is by design you create Police Terror and i think you describe it very well in these neighborhoods as a form of social control d. Industrialized pockets where there is no work unless youre forced into the illegal economy and of course then they invent crimes. Selling loose cigarettes which is how our garner was murdered or struck him but as train traffic i mean this is endless not knowing your lawn mowing your lawn. But its not accidental whats happened is it its still in way the destruction systems are built you know is that. Police have the power and opportunity to kill in the last people and so the poor folks right now is shifting and reducing police power and shifting away from a congress where police have the opportunity to engage in contact with people and so i think the important thing here is that we have to look at it as a contest exposure perspective that police have the power and the resources and the opportunity and given that they were you know and so i think thats thats key here and a part of it is also you know the ways in which every ministration of you know that current economic order all of the social ills that result from it that response is ok lets try to police and control a way out of this you know and so in many ways the system is structured in a way that focuses on control and punishment and profit over over people went just as an example i do work in a public housing. Development in the org and right now theres no gas in the building they havent had gas since march and so magic never going to pandemic and that adding to the elevator isnt working. And that theres recently a fled that this on the 1004 theres a flood in so this water leaking into peoples apartments but so in thats only a result of capital douglas and the fact that this building is not properly maintained because theres nothing structurally that that changes our ships you know structurally that building from a building in the middle of manhattan thats a high rise luxury building the only difference is resources and upkeep and making sure that that its you know prioritize but you know what the community does right outside theres a Police Station police car station there 247 there are 2 officers though usually inside the lobby or directly off right and then if you go down the street one way theres another cop car that station then down the other way the other cop but its there in the lights are on then i. And so what we have is that what were going to take those resources and to channel it towards the people as opposed to creating this context where its you if you just drive through news its about punishment control. And not actually giving people the resources that they need to thrive and be saved and yet thats where all our resources city resources have gone up to 50 percent of city budget 6000000000. 00 a year in new york city are spent on police we invest in control as you pointed out not in people and i think you know i dont know what your senses but my senses looking at these protests on the street theres now an understanding the institution i think and that its not reformable it has to be dismantled would you agree yeah and i mean i sort of being involved in different spaces and you know thinking back to fareed is saying and the social movement that emerged out of that is that this work there have been people for decades at that have been saying you know police in our home look at critical resistance people like injury richie angela davis maam calm a group was a governor that we see that there had been people weapon saying this for a very long time i think 5 years ago coming out of that meant that moment the movement for black clouds and emergence of that broader ecosystems you basically had also a proliferation of people that started to really think about what does it look like to the alternatives to policing what does it look like to the developed campaigns and efforts to shift resources away from policing towards communities and also develop alternative Emergency Response that this is been a part of like conversations but its been largely sort of more nice but what happened is that for example we reclaim the block which is a was a collector in minneapolis i actually wrote about january that they were pushing to to. The from the police to come to reinvest the money in Community Resources not scientists so Emergency Response but the mayor and city council didnt listen and you know then months later we see you know that same coalition was at the heart of the push and the successful push to dismantle the department you know the black residents collected in that 150 and so what happened is that people have over the past 2 years have been engaging in deep study in conversations in organizing around all of this so when this moment happened previously police in city leaders and politicians were able to always defined what happens next were always in the fine and theyre going what do we do moving forward around policing what reforms we implement but now what happened is because of this this past 5 years the narrative wasnt even to be controlled about is that activists and work nights got ahead of it and said no we dont want to reforms we want to divest the funding this mental about i want to ask a couple questions 1st about the gaslighting i corporations even the n. F. L. Nancy pelosi with candy cloth and put even Police Officers taking the knee are people behind it or do you think they see through it many people see that there might be some people who might see a symbolic gesture but the people who have been you know engaged in deep sort of study and work and organizing around and even just people you know people more broadly in general you know i think that many people are seeing youre taking in the and then youre also brutalizing and beating and pepper spraying a tear gassing its last thing protests is that the the level of. Discount like that that discordance between you know what the police are symbolically doing with what theyre actually doing is just so loud that and people are able to cut through and say. You know no this is this is a mob but some people are not and thats why they supposed to try to say to try to maintain a net of that this system is not reform let me before i go into what has to be done i want to ask the Police Unions because. I visit me i would a mile great revolutionary. Frame for this crime and yet the the fraternal brotherhood of police in philadelphia which. Essentially functions as a White Hate Group has mounted a war against him. And even when you get reformist mayors even reformist Police Chiefs these Pol