You better understand what this world is like and if you have that desire, and i surely surely hope you do, you can do worse than start with william shakespeare. [applause]. You can watch this and other programs on my netbook to be. Org. Cspan, created by americas Cable Television companies and brought to you as a public by your cable or satellite provider. Next on book tvs afterwards program, Manhattan Institute seated near fell, Heather Macdonald discusses policing in america. She is. She is interviewed by delores jonesbrown, law and plea science professor at john jay college, about her book, the war on cops, how the attack on law and order makes everyone laissez. Good afternoon, how are you today. A great, thank you so much. Im happy to have this opportunity to talk to about your new book, the war on cops. How the new attack on war makes everyone laissez. We know each other, we been on previous panels together, one of the first things i like to ask you is you discussed in the book about whether or not the criminal Justice System and police in particular a racist. What is your definition of racism . You dont give one in the book but you talk a lot about racism and being racist, how should we take your definition of racism . Guest i think it is hostile treatment towards a person on the basis of his skin color. Host okay. And a person who would be racist would do what . Guest make judgments about somebody based on skin color alone were even as part of other set of characteristics. But we hear from the black lives Matter Movement is cops are racist. That they are in minority neighborhoods and oppressing people in those communities, presumably it would seem really out of whim or caprice. There is never any explanation as to why officers would be in those communities. So i am simply adopting a phrase that is often bandied about by black lives matter protesters. I go to these protests and i see the signs that say racist killer cop, kkk cop. They are suggesting that cops are motivated by racial animus in the lawenforcement actions that they take. Host so you previously wrote a book, think the title is Something Like our cops racist. That that book was published at a time when there is an incident on the turnpike where for young man, three African Americans one latino male were shot by two Police Officers, they were were shot at 11 times. In the guilty plea that the two officers entered for having provided false information about who they were stopping on the turnpike, did those officers admit they had in fact targeted black and latino males and that they have been told to do so by superiors . Guest that was part of the guilty plea, you are right. But evidence that was more broadbased and statistical that the new jersey attorney general used to show disparities and stops did not take into account driving behavior. There is a study that was subsequently done by the same Statistical Organization that contributed to the Justice Department in new jersey attorney general that looked at driving behavior and found that blacks on the new jersey turnpike were speeding at twice the rate of white drivers and that the disparities at least over 90 Miles Per Hour were even greater. It is not clear that officers can even see the race of drivers at night. In fact, stops done by radar near the same disparities that are driven overwhelmingly by driving behavior. Spee1 im a former prosecutor. One of the things i love to do at trial is to use the phrase, by your own admissions, when i had defendants on the stand for crossexamination. So should i understand you so should i understand you to say that even if these officers, kenna and hogan admitted that they engaged in racial targeting on the highway and other supervisors had advised them to do so, we should give less credence to that than a set of aggregate statistics . Guest i think a set of aggregate statistics goes to the over all behavior of the new jersey state troopers. If these guys were engaged in drug interdiction unless a there been told to go after jamaican posse, and they had the dea keep very close track of who is doing the drug smuggling between on the eastern quarter. So if they are looking for particular drug gang that is racially identified, to to me it seems to me legitimate that would be one part of the ground for pulling someone over, but for average traffic stops i just not think that is happening. Host you send much of the book and you spend a lot of your recent career talking about the effectiveness of cops in new york city and denying that it involves racism in terms of how it is practiced. But you are aware that a commander, and inspector, i think Deputy Inspector is caught on audio tape. It was introduced in the play trial that you write about extensively in the book, im saying that you have to stop the right people, male, black, between the ages of 14 and 21. But he does not go on to say anything only if you have reasonable suspicion. He stops his description of the white people with male, black, ages 1421. Isnt that another admission that at least some members of an new York City Police department believe that allmale lacks are potentially criminal and that the targeting of such mail blacks is unwarranted . Guest dolores, i do nothing that is a fair characterization of what he was caught on tape saying. He had called in a Police Officer who is wired, who had recently joined the lawsuit in floyd for the fact that he had done absolutely no proactive activity in the previous year. This is one of those officers on the way low and of the bell curve of officers that are actually trying to get out of their car and investigate suspicious behavior. He put out a hypothetical, he said if we have a robbery pattern involving young, black males, black males between the ages of 14 and 22, that is who you should be stopping. He was goaded into saying that, it was clear from this interaction that this guy came in hoping to get him to Say Something that could be used in the floyd trial. This was not something he just said out of the blue on his own initiative. Even as he phrased it, i find nothing objectionable about that. He was given a hypothetical of a robbery pattern. To be honest, it is a hypothetical that sadly mears the Current Situation in new york city. That praise on minority victims in minority neighborhoods. When you you look at who is committing robberies in new york , blacks are 23 of the population, they commit 70 70 of all robberies. Whites by contrast are 30 34 of the population, they commit 4 of all robberies. So it is in those minority neighborhoods when you have elderly people getting stuck up. So when he came up with this pattern it is one that his Police Officer here, again and again, not from themselves but from the victims of robbery themselves. Police officers hope against hope that they will for once get a description of a suspect in a violent street crime, whether it is a driveby shooting or robbery, that is white. But given the fact of how crime is a distributed in cities today, that almost never happens. Host one definition of racism and the definition i call classic racism, and it takes the behavior of a few people from a particular group and then project that behavior onto everyone in the group. For for example, we know since 1972 that in urban communities you think you talk about philadelphia and the book, that the the greatest amount of serious crime is actually committed by very small number of active criminals. So the notion that, and that pattern was held over time. So theres a very small number of active criminals who are violent offenders. The nypds own statistics indicate that roughly 8090 of all stops do not produce a lesser summons and that roughly, ill take the year 2012. 80 of of blacks who were stopped during that year were not found to be engaged in criminal behavior. If you are are in innocent black person who is unfortunate to live in a high crime area, what do you make of those statistics from the Police Department . Guest first of all i have found it very easy to meet young black males who say they have never been stopped. I spoke to a boy in the mount hope section of the bronx. He said i have never been stop because im a good boy. He goes he goes to work, he goes to school, he does not hangout on the corners. In philadelphia as you mentioned, i write about young crack dealers there and she devotes an entire chapter of who she calls the clean people who are exactly the ones you mention. They drink beer rather than smoke marijuana, they stay home playing video video games, they are not hanging out in the street light. They have had no interaction with a cop. Ive also met people who say yes, i have been stopped by the cop and i understand why that was happening. The cops are doing their job. There is no question that black males today face a much higher rate of getting stopped when they are innocent than white males do today. That is a crime fact that the Community Unfortunately pays because of the elevated rates of crime. But i would take issue with your characterization of the stop data. It is true, about six about 6 of all stops resulted in an arrest and 6 of all stops resulted in a summons. The aclu, the legal a society, drew the conclusion that that meant every other stop that didnt was necessarily of an innocent person. That is just not the case. The open air drug dealing are very carefully choreographed to make sure that officers do not have probable cause to make an arrest. There is a careful segmenting of who has the money, whereas the drugs. The contraband is often kept in a neutral location. So somebody, a Police Officer can be intervening in open air drug dealing without having the probable cause to make an arrest. And of laissez theres been a pattern of car theft on the street and an officer see somebody walking along a line of cars trying doorhandles, theres no probable cause to make an arrest for that. But that may well over another car theft in that neighborhood. So we do not know what number of stops were in fact intervening in criminal behavior but i am certain it is not a 0 . Host lets go back to the facts on the innocent numbers of high crime or even low crime communities. Youre familiar with research that said that in neighborhoods where blacks and latinos only make up 14 of the residential population, they make up 70 of the stops in those locations. So it would seem that if youre in a high Crime Community or a low Crime Community, so long as you are black or latino you stand a greater risk of being stopped under the practices that were challenged in court by the lawsuit. Guest so let me ask you dealers, what do you think separation look like . In new york city as i mentioned, blacks are 23 of the pie place i commit 70 of all shootings. Of all robberies. As far shootings go, fluctuates year to year but it goes between 75 and 80 . When you add hispanic shootings to black shootings in new york city, you account for 98 of all shootings. That type of criminal behavior is going to manifest itself in other types of lawbreaking, low level lawbreaking. Whites commit less than 2 of all shootings, though they are 34 of the population. Even those crime disparities, do you think that stop rates should mirror population data . Should whites whites be 34 of all stops in blacks be 23 of all stops . Even though whites are virtually not present in violent street crime . Spee1 you you and i have talked about this before, i take that position that people are individuals and that any time we Group Individuals together and make us about the individuals in the entire group based on the behavior of a few, that is problematic. Your lawyer, im a lawyer, lawyer, theres actually a constitutional amendment that says that we shall not do that. That everyone should enjoy equal protection under the law whether they are criminal or noncriminal. So arguably, that is one of the first issues in terms of looking at aggregate data. But to criticisms that i would suggest people might be making about the book, it contains a lot of information and we only have one hour to talk about it. Guest can i make one point though, i would love love to get your answer on this, for about two years as you recall the New York Times was focusing on the 73rd precinct in brownsville, brooklyn. It had a high stop rates. What they never conveyed, lets compare brownsville to bay ridge, brooklyn which is several miles away. The stop rate differential between brownsville and bay ridge is about 15 times greater. The per capita rate of people in brownsville getting stopped have about a 15 times greater chance of getting stopped in those even in bay ridge. It is true brownsville is predominantly black and bay ridge is predominantly white and asian. What is left out of that analysis is the per capita shooting rate in brownsville is 81 times higher than in bay ridge. Now what that means is that every time, and this is again, its not coming from the police, these are people who are reporting the shootings. It means that every time there is a gang driveby shooting, the pleas are going to be out there in high numbers making stops to try and let the rival gang know that they are being observed. Given that degree of shooting differential and the inevitable response of police to it, in in order to try to prevent another person from being wounded or shot will result in a higher rate of stops. Again, if you go to the comsat meetings in new york city, these are are these weekly, data driven accountability meetings where local precinct commanders are held ruthlessly accountable for the crimes and their Solutions Forward in their precincts. They do not talk about race, they talk they talk about where people are being victimized. Given these disparities in new york city of where people are being shot, the police are going to be doing proactive policing and pedestrian stops in those neighborhoods that will generate the data that shows these disparities that the aclu will then use against the nypd in a lawsuit. , they have no choice. Host im glad hes that were choices that your position that an simplex have no choice but to accept high rates of stops and in terms of policing, high rates of lowlevel enforcement in order to have Public Safety . Guest i think that officers have an indefeasible obligation to treat everybody they made with courtesy and respect. If an innocent person is stopped and subjected to the humiliation and possibly terror of being stop by the police, the police have to explain to him why he was stopped. Ideally, play the radio call back. That officer should not walkway from that interaction without making sure that person understands why they were stopped and ideally has reached some sort of agreement as far as the broken windows to policing that you mention and these are the lowlevel, quality of life public order offensive, every time i go to the Police Community meeting in the south bronx or central harlem, central brooklyn, what i hear from the residence of those neighborhoods is that they want more policing, not less. Theyre not saying arrest the robbers, their same bring public order, they set you arrest the drug dealers and their back on the corner the next day. There are kids hanging out of my lobby smoking weed in dealing drugs, im terrified to go down and pick up my mail. I spoke with my cancer amputee. My point is please are getting the request from the members of the committee themselves. Host but the police also got that request from the community and thats how we came up with a lawsuit say talk about in the book, so those requests were from parents particularly in the bronx that said, my son connected to the store come back home without being stop by the police. There actually some media reports of people who lived in buildings being stopped in their pajamas on their way to the trash can and asked for identification. So the notion that there are at least two sets of voices, including voices the Police Officers, its often not talked about that there were former and current Police Officers who testified against the practice of stop and frisk. Why do you you think that is not often mentioned . Guest i think the officers that they got were disgruntled officers. They were inevitably people who are under observation for absolutely doing basically nothing on the job to try to protect the members of the community in which they work from violence. Given the reddick around stop, question, and frisk, i wouldve thought that aclu and the new York Civil Liberties Union would have been able to find hundreds of completely clean people that have been stopped for no reason at all. They were plaintiffs which they had whittled down and they finally got i think 11 main plaintiffs in their Class Action Lawsuit have massive criminal h. Lawsuit have massivethey recently, one of them wb he went by in the lawsuit last year was federally indicted for gang conspiracy for stomping a boy to death in the bronx several years ago. I would submit, and he was well known to people in that precinct, when they saw that he was the main plaintiff they cannot believe his eyes. There is the reason why he was stopped because hes involved in gang activity. Host but to be fair, we we had a Police Commissioner and corrections commissioner all one person, who ended up federally indicted as well and spent time in prison and he came out of prison been able to talk more concretely about the hollows of incarceration and the last three chapters of your book talk more about incarceration and that sort of thing than it does about the war on cops. Why do you include those last few chapters, they seem to have very little to do with the war on the topic that the book is titled. My point is the black lives Matter Movement has a much broader focus and we are living through a moment where there is hardly a single lawenforcement practice that is not under attack for having a disparate impact on plaques. Certainly we live in a narra