We shouldve been coming to the conversation the table along time ago. We stood down with police. This is what is happening. This is where we are having the problem. This is where we want it to stop. We also got together and started looking at the lessons of putting these people into office. Talking about the situation down there. Going to be our last collar on todays washington journal. We will see you right back here tomorrow morning. Hope you have a great monday. All this week highlighting books during the authors series. Tomorrow Cheryl Atkinson on her water her book, stonewalled. On wednesday shane harris and out war the rise of the military internet complex. Day as friday, clarence page. Columnist 1904 to 1918. This year q1 day turns 10 years old. To mark a decade of conversations, we are featuring one interview over the holiday season. Today kenneth feinberg, special master of the 911 fund and what his life is like. That will be at 7 00 eastern here on cspan. The nih onrector of the promise and challenges of cancer research. Looking at unprecedented innovation in an environment of shrinking rhetoric federal resources. Home in amazing to see the insight. Theyre coming from technology we did not have before. The whole genomics revolution insight into how things work and how things go wrong sometimes. The effort to understand the of the advance of Clinical Health records. All of these things coming together in a way i would not have imagined would happen in my lifetime, and yet we are not nurturing that engine of discovery the way we could the. A statistic i think is troubling and discouraging to young scientists is the following, what is your chance yeah, you cancergreat idea about research and is preclinical and you have the next idea, where are you going to go to get funded . What is the chance your grant will get funded cap 01 and six. Will get funded . 1 in 6. Cancer research it is 1 in 10, even lower. Cancer on the state of research from francis collins. Next, a look at reducing violence in predominantly africanamerican communities. Efforts to keep kids in school in using a special prosecutor when officers are involved in shootings. This is about an hour and a half. Want to start by highlighting a couple of the things that those of us think are important for the record. Multifaceted approach to finding a solution. It has to include stakeholders, successfulng for systems change. Dealcognize in order to with the issue, we have to talk about changing systems. The problem will not be istalled today, but our goal for the audience to first and foremost provoke thought. This, andu to get to finally, we want you to leave with specifics on what you might be able to do when you get back home. Onays conversation focuses recent acts of officer violence, cop violence against young black men and addressing gang and Domestic Violence in our communities. Violence has always been a community of color but recent events have put it at the forefront in most of not all of our minds and our own state we have hadolina three indictments against Law Enforcement officers for shooting young men of color. Just some statistics as you listen to the presentation. Africanamericans are about three times as likely as white drivers and two times as likely as latino drivers to be searched during a traffic stop, even though they are significantly less likely than whites to have contraband when they are stopped. Although there is no additional database on the total number of officerinvolve the tablet is coming each year between 2005 and 2012, a black her son was killed nearly twice a week by police. With almost 20 of those being killed under the age of 21. We talk about our next generation, hopefully the statistic in and of itself will impress upon you the fierce urgency of now in our taking action. These facts deserve a better Public Policy response, and that is why we are here. At the same time, we face violence within our own community. At nbc sl, we are not running away from that fact. We knowledge that. But we wanted to be clear that africanamerican firearm related deaths are twice as high as they are for whites. Black women are almost three times as likely to experience death as a result of domestic or intimate partner violence. Teen or Youth Violence continues to be a problem, especially among black males between the ages of 10 years old and weigh four years old, whose homicide rate exceed those of hispanics and whites in the same age group. We recognize that interviolence interracial violence let me try this again. I was thing about Rudy Giuliani and i lost my train of thought. [laughter] a try this 11 more. Let me try this one once more. We recognize that intrarasul racial violence is not unique to the black community. [applause] i wasnt fishing for a comment. That said, the violence within our Community Also merits are full attention and sustained emphasis on sustained commitment to doing something about it. We need social action and collaboration from the public and private sector, and i will because all of these stats are beginning to overwhelm you. My eyes glazed over, and i started off saying its not about me, its about these men and women on the panel read let me quickly moved to that. Before we hear from the people on the panel, i want to take a moment to introduce a young man who is taken the time to comment from the administration to share the administrations position on this issue. And before we get to our panelists, please allow me to introduce mr. Roy austan, the Deputy Assistant to the president for the office of urban affairs, justice, and opportunity. As Deputy Assistant, he coordinates policy, covering terminal justice, civil criminal rights, civil rights, housing, and other areas. He is a member of my brothers keeper task force. Please welcome mr. Austin. [applause] good morning. With a name like roy austan, some of you might think i am from texas, but im from the great state of pennsylvania. The let me start, and thank you ms. Cobb hunter. Let me start with some words from the president. This is from a speech he gave not too long ago. And he said i say as someone who believes that Law Enforcement has a incredible difficult job. That every man in uniform every man and woman in uniform are putting their lives a risk to protect us. They have the right to come home from their jobs just like we do. But there is real crime out there, and they have got to tackle day in and day out. But they are only going to be able to do their job effectively if everybody has confidence in the system. And right now, unfortunately, we are seeing too many instances where people just do not have confidence that folks are being treated fairly. In some cases, those may be misrepresentations, but in some cases, that is a reality. It is incumbent upon all of us as americans, regardless of race or region, or faith, that we recognize that this is an american problem, and not just a black problem, for a brown problem, or native american problem, this is an american problem. When anybody in this country is not being treated equally, under the law, that is a problem. It is my job as president to help solve it. And those the words of our president , and he has been doing what he can do to help solve it. So let me continue with some of these statistics. Some of these many of you know already. We have 5 of the worlds population, and yet 25 of the worlds inmates. One third of all americans have some kind of arrest record or criminal history. It is 2. 2 Million People who are currently incarcerated in our jails and prisons around this country. We know for a fact that the impact of a criminal record is enormous, both on the individual, on the individuals families, and on our communities. We absolutely know that the impact on the Africanamerican Community is far greater than it is on any other community. We also know that the levels of incarceration that we see today are unsustainable. They are unsustainable financially. They are unsustainably sociably. And to be honest with you, they are on sustainable unsustainable morley. Morally. We know this is bigger than just the criminal Justice System. We know this is about jobs, housing, and education. We know all those things matter, and one of the best things we can do to help to fix the criminal Justice System is to make sure people have jobs. This president has created over 10 million jobs. But lets talk about the criminal Justice System, and things that have already been done. Things that i would hope youre doing in your districts to move forward and to help solve the problems we see in the criminal Justice System. One thing is the School Discipline guide that was put out by the department of educations and apartment of justice. Department of justice. We know that youth of color are disciplined more severely than other youth in their schools. This guidance helps to educate Health Educators help to fix that problem. We know that attorney general holder has instituted what is called smart on crime. To look at only the most serious defenses, so we are not incarcerating people for the wrong reasons. The office of juvenile justice has turned that and made it smart on juvenile justice, so were looking at alternatives to incarceration for our youth great we know that we have the justice reinvestment initiative, which is currently in existence in 21 jurisdictions. When it was justin 17, it was evaluated and found that over 10 years, it was save us 4 billion by not locking up so many people. It is working. For the first time in 40 years, we have seen a reduction both in incarceration, and in crime. The first time in 40 years. We know that we do not have to incarcerate everybody. For there to be Public Safety. We know that for the first time, weve seen a deep freeze and federal incarceration. We know that many states, including the state of texas are reducing the number of peoples who were incarcerated substantially enough eating an increase in crime. We know we can get these numbers down even further. We also recognize there is more to do. And the more to do is the president Just Announced a task force of 21st Century Policing that is going to look at policing across this country. We know that we just looked at all of the equipment programs, 18 billion going into Police Department. And that is going to be reformed. We Just Announced 75 million we want to see go towards body cameras. The president , the attorney general, and the secretary of education Just Announced a correctional education guidance for kids who are incarcerated. We know we have my brothers keeper communities out there, over 200 communities that have stepped up to push forth the my brothers Keeper Community program. We know this is bipartisan. We know there are numerous bills on the hill, both republicans and democrats to the value in reforming our criminal Justice System. And we are listening to. The attorney general is out there listening. He has been to atlanta, cleveland, and memphis. He is on his way to chicago, philadelphia, and oakland. We going to continue to listen to you. We ask you to reach out with new ideas. We want a partner with you, we want to make the system a better system. We want to ensure that we really have a country where all of us are equal under the law. I thank you. [applause] thank you, reverend austin. [indiscernible] [applause] [laughter] for our sound people, is it ok if i sit here . X feedback. Feedback. I hear it. I will get up and do what i need to do from up here. We are ready to start our conversation. We are really pleased to be able to talk to offer you a fiveminute women with the level of expertise that they have. Weve talked about how we wanted to flow, and we thought a lot of youre like us, lord bored with having talking heads sit and read from prepared remarks. We thought a ushaped table would help us to see each other, and have a conversation. If you have question, tweet your questions about hastag nbcslalc38. First we have the lady of texas, the queen of the texas legislature. Representative Senfronia Thompson is with the texas house, and is the longest serving women and africanamerican in texas history. She has been a champion for the underserved in the underrepresented. She has authored bills on racial profiling, to mr. Violence, and the hate crimes act. Next, we have dr. David klinger. He is our researcher, who is going to tell us all we need to know and give us the data to back that up. Released the source of the data to back it up. He is a professor of criminology, and criminal justice at the university of missouri st. Louis, and Senior Research fellow at the luis foundation. He has worked as a Police Officer in los angeles, and redmond washington. He has written on the issues of on the issues of arrest, practices, and use of force and terrorism for the last 10 years. Next to that is chief john dixon, iii. We were teasing him that he came in his uniform so we know he means business. We will listen to what he has to say. He is with the Petersburg Police in petersburg, virginia. He previously served the Richmond Community for over 24 years, and had a chance to experience all aspects of policing. His passions are in the area of community engagement, use engagement, and improving the overall quality of life and neighborhoods. He is also the immediate past president of the National Organization of black Law Enforcement executives, known as noble. Then we have representative deborah barry, who is championing legislation to take lethal weapons from convicted domestic abusers, keep children safe from online predators, and educational reform. Lastly, but certainly not least, we have a new be on the panel. A freshman legislator, Emmanuel Chris welch, who is been serving in the Illinois Legislature ends january 2013. Since january 2013. He has authored and passed legislation on reducing Gang Violence in communities in schools, he also served as Legal Counsel for various School Districts and municipalities. Lenin mention a couple of ground rules. Each panelist will have five minutes to make their opening comment. We will go in order with each panelist. Afterwards, i hope that the conversation i will begin a conversation with our panelists. Later on, we will open it up for q a. There are cards that were in your seats. If you dont have a card, raise your hand, and a staff member will bring a card to you. You dont have to wait until the very end to write your question or submit your question. If you are like me, you probably want to write it as soon as it comes to you, because you might forget it. But feel free to put the question on an index card, and submit it. They will respond to those questions at the very end. We want to make sure that your phones or silence, that you keep your side conversations to yourself, and finally, if you would rather tweet your questions, we would ask that you please tweet any questions to hashtag. We are ready to start. Are you ready . All right. Misty miss t. If showtime. Its showtime. When you have been in legislation this long, you are flexible. I bet you can hear me now. I want to welcome you to taxes. You have been welcomed by my colleague. Welcome you to taxes texas. I want to take this opportunity to thank my colleagues, representative Helen Giddings and the senator for luring you to our state and being so successful in doing that. Im serving the legislature here for some 42 years. I had a whole lot of other things that could have been doing. But i enjoyed my stay in the texas letters later. Legislature. Im single, im independent, i have a job, i work, make my own money. [laughter] but there are persons in our society who cannot afford to hire a lobbyist, to come up to the state house and advocate for themselves. Those are the little dogs. I like to look out for the little dogs. Those people dont feel like they have anybody to take care of their needs, their wants, and their desires. Sometimes you want to say, hell, i dont be bothered with this damn bill. Why did they bother me with this . But after you listen to this person, in you listen to their needs and cries and hurt, you cant afford to let them walk out the door without giving them some help. I worked on a hate crimes bill in texas. Let me give you the backdrop. We have a bill in texas that if you knock down a fence and kill a chicken, a pig, a cow, or a bat, you can get a thirddegree felony and go to the penitentiary. It sounds like a joke, but it is a truth. But the residents the legislation was resistant and being able to force people to face the fact that hate crime existed within the state. And that the life of a human being was less valuable than that chicken. And that pig, and that calvin you might have asked that we run into a fence and killed, and get a penitentiary in texas. We had a man who lived in jasper, texas. Going home, minding his own business, not emitting any crimes. Two white guys decided to change him behind the truck chain in behind a truck and pull him behind the truck until they had dismembered his entire body. He was so dismembered, his family could even successfully bury him. They went to the funeral home to take a suit, the man says there is no need. We cant even fit the body in a suit, because we have body parts. We passed that bill in taxes because we had a hate crime bill that would not pass constitutional muster. The biggest obstacle was the did not want people with Sexual Orientation to be a part of that protection. I know you feel like me. America ought to be good on its promises