Commentary for ms. And bc and npr and has been featured in 60 minutes and profile Washington Post. A love professor at georgetown university. He is the author of lets get free a hiphop theory of justice winner of the harry shopping media award and showcold policing black men both from the new press. He has published numerous opeds and book reviews including the New York Times the Washington Post the boston globe and the los angeles time. So, please lets welcome them. Thank you for being here. Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for coming out. It really is my pleasure to have the opportunity to engage you in this way. Im looking forward to your comments your reactions your questions and before we get to all of that i would of course like to thank politics and pros for hosting this event and thank paul for agree to be a moderator. So thank you very much paul. So what i thought i might do in the very limited time that i have is really two things one just say a little bit about what motivated me to write this book and second say a little bit about the arguments that i advance in the book and then really shut up and turn things over to paul. So with respect to the motivation the starting point was to push back against a dominant frame for thinking about race and racism in the United States and that dominant frame goes Something Like this problems of race and racism are a function of individual bad people engaging in intentional discrimination against other individuals. That frame interferes with our ability to think structurally about problems of race and policing now when one says that we should be thinking structurally about race and policing that i know sounds kind of academic. What does that mean . So i promise to be specific about how i see structures in a minute, but one thing i wanted to do was to say that problems of race and policing. Not about individual bad cops targeting individual black people for race violence. Thats not what its about again. Its structural. Second reason i wrote this book was to say that forms of policing that we think are troubling problematic and worrisome. Are not forms of policing that are necessarily illegal. It turns out the constitution. Authorizes Police Officers to engage in various forms of Police Interactions that are violent the book tries to tell that story so that we dont conceive of policing as kind of a bad cop problem, but we think of it as well as a bad law problem. And the particular body of art that i want to focus your attention on is Fourth Amendment law. So im curious if i were to say. Do you know your miranda warnings, you know warnings . Im tempted to ask you out to hold hands and say your miranda warnings. You could probably say your miranda warnings because you know, even if youre an abolitionist, you probably have your favorite cop show. Im not gonna ask you to tell me what it is, but youre probably have one. Now if i were to ask you to recite the text of the Fourth Amendment who could do it. Probably well, not you for butler who teaches whatever the law, but you probably cant do it. And and thats part of why i wrote this book specifically think about discourses that we have about policing we talk about the power to arrest we talk about qualified immunity. We talk about excessive force. We talk about no knock warrants. We talk about stop and frisk. We talk about driving wild black. Each of these problems are Fourth Amendment problems, but you wouldnt know that from the way in which these issues are discussed in the press. So i did a little bit of data. Diving before this talk literally yesterday and i looked in a media archive to kind of see how many stories do you see if you looked at for example deadly force. Four thousand how many of those stories about deadly force also reference the Fourth Amendment . 26 i looked at traffic stops and driving while black how many stories you think you see Something Like 6,000. How many of those stories reference forth amendment . 5 no knock warrants. How many stories do you see Something Like 10,000 how many of those reference the Fourth Amendment . 35 so we can the Fourth Amendment place a Critical Role with respect to all of these pieces of policing. And were not talking about it. There isnt an understanding of the ways in which this body of law constitutionalized the very forms of policing that we think of troubling. Thats another reason. I wrote the book. So lets Say Something about the Fourth Amendment specifically so as paul knows the Fourth Amendment protects us against unreasonable searches and seizures. Thats the critical text again, it protects us from unreasonable searches and seizures. So lets pause and be very clear about what that means. It means number one. That if an officer does something to us. And we cant call it a search or a seizure. The Fourth Amendment doesnt kick in in other words Police Officers can engage us. Without any justification so long as its not a certain seizure. The problem is a Supreme Court keeps saying that various forms of intrusive interactions are not searches or seizures. So if im just on the Street Corner and a given afternoon and a couple approaches me, where are you going what youre doing. Where have you been . Can i see your id . Can i search you etc . Has no reason to think ive done anything wrong. Fourth Amendment Law says im supposed to feel free to leave. Im not seized so the cop doesnt have to justify that. So one big problem is that the court says over and over and over again that intrusive engagements that Police Officers have with us are not searches are not seizures. Therefore the Fourth Amendment doesnt restrain what offices can do thats one problem. The other problem is that even when the Court Concludes that some kind of conduct is a seizure. It makes it easy for Police Officers to justify those seizures. The classic example is stop and frisk. When the cops stop you, thats a seizure when they frisk you, thats a search. The Supreme Court makes it easy for Police Officers to justify stops in frisk by requiring a really low level of justification. You probably heard it reasonable suspicion. Thats a really low justification. So it means that. The Fourth Amendment is supposed to operate as a barrier between the people and the police the black people it operates as a gateway. It doesnt restrain. What Police Officers can do . To black bodies now in many respects one could take the position of paul has taken about the criminal justice at large which is to say the criminal justice isnt broken. Its working the way its supposed to work. Thats an argument that you have long made. One can make a similar kind of arguments. With respect to the Fourth Amendment in this sense. Fourth amendment was added to the constitution in 1791. As part of the bill of rights the Fourth Amendment was added to a slavery constitution. Our constitution that legitimize and anticipated slavery are constitution that assumed that we black people could be captured without any of the protections that the Fourth Amendment affords so you could say its not surprising that the Fourth Amendment doesnt protect us today. Because historically the Fourth Amendment wasnt designed to do that work. And thats part of the argument that i lay out in the introduction. So i want to back up and just Say Something very quickly about how we might think about race and policing structurally that includes the Fourth Amendment. Give you a quick sense of some of the chapters and then ill stop promise. So what i mean by race and policing as a structure for all problem, so there are a couple of moving parts moving part one is this repeated Police Interactions exposes black people to the possibility of violence think about it this way if the police arent interacting with you, they cant stop and frisk you they cant kill you. So part of what we have to think about then is what are the social factors . That make it possible for Police Officers to have repeat interactions with black people. Fourth amendment is part of the answer. Thats one dynamic. Another structural part that we should be thinking about is Police Culture. Police trainings and Police Unions. Thats its own cluster. If Police Culture encourages violence even implicitly thats what youll see. If Police Trainings disattend violence violence is what you will see if Police Unions are more interested. In protecting Police Officers rather than holding them accountable violence is what you will see thats another structure. Still a third structure and this one is particularly crucial is this so assume that theres been some act of violence. Theres no dispute about that. Someones been brutalized. Someones been killed. Weve caught it on film. How does that violence interact with the legal system what happens when Police Violence interact with the legal system a number of things happens one Police Violence plus the legal system equals justifiable force. Youve seen that over and over the number of ways that can happen a the prosecutor wont bring any charges. Thats Police Violence plus the legal system equals justifiable force or lets say the prosecutor brings charges the grand jury doesnt issue an indictment. Youve seen that case. Lets say the prosecutor brings charges the grand jury issues and indictments and then the judge or a jury says no conviction. So these are all moments in which you have Police Violence. Theres no dispute it interacts with the legal system and it comes out as justifiable force. Dad black bodies justified before us another dynamic is Police Violence plus the legal system equals qualified immunity. I cant get into the details of qualified immunity because if i go in that rabbit hole, youll be saying come back devon and i wont be able to come back. Bottom line is that qualified immunity erects a really high bar to holding Police Officers that kind of what everyone kind of agrees with that. The only debate is is that a good thing or a bad thing . Another related factor is even when you win lawsuits against Police Officers. Do they pay who pays . Who pays . Its not the Police Officer. Its your tax dollars. So please officers themselves pay nothing and finally try suing. A Police Department or the city . For acts of violence in which Police Officers engage cant do it wont win unless the Police Department has a policy that says lets go target black people and you wouldnt just call it a racist Police Department. Youd call it a pretty stupid Ballistic Department no ones gonna announce their racial project in that particular kind of way. So the reason reason i focus on these dynamics is front end of policing, you know that at the back end youre going to be protected by qualified immunity. Youre going to be by justifiable before us. The department is never going to be sued it means that theres no incentive for you to exercise care. You know that you can brutalize survey and target black people with impunity and thats exactly what we see. So all of these dynamics are not about some individual Police Officer engaging in some individual act of violence against some individual black person. Its about overarching structural feature and Fourth Amendment law is a crucial part of the story. So unpack the story of Fourth Amendment law and several chapters, and ill just briefly name the chapters and then as i said, i will stop so the first chapter is just on pedestrian checks the ways in which Police Officers can engage us on the street in a range of ways that dont trigger the Fourth Amendment. The next chapter is on traffic stops the driving while black phenomenon and the ways in which traffic stops effectively are gateways to more intrusive encounters that again are perfectly constitutional. Im not going to go into the details of all of that because then you wont buy the book. Chapter 3 stop in frisk and an important part of the stuff in first story. Is that the person who wrote brown versus board of education you all know brown versus board of education the case that says separate but equal is unconstitutional. Justice warren wrote that opinion Justice Warren also constitutionalized stuff and frisk that very same person. So this chapter tells that story. And then the stop and strip. A particular sexually violent practice to which black women are routinely subjected at the borders and which were not really talking about which again authorized under the Fourth Amendment. Predatory policing the use of policing to generate revenues for cities and municipalities and to increase pay for Police OfficersFourth Amendment basically sits back and allows that kind of policing to operate. On the final two chapters of these so in chapter 6 i ask you to read a Supreme Court opinion. I will have prepped you by the other chapters so that you really understand the law pretty well. And you read opinion in which . Supreme court every single justice cosigns racial profiling against black people. This is no exaggeration. The case is rent versus United States in which a unanimous Supreme Court constitutionalized racial profiling. Its a clear indication of the ease with which constitutional doctrine can function in ways that make black lives disposable. And the final chapter is a rewriting of that very opinion where i said look, this is what the Supreme Court could easily have done. On the Fourth Amendment law to make black lives matter and it shows not to so clearly i couldnt in this limited time give you a full sense of the book, but i hope you understand that the project again is the broaden the frame for thinking about race and policing and to center a body of law that is deeply implicated in every single problematic dimension not policing about which we might talk, but that isnt a part of our collective consciousness. So ill stop there and turn things over to you amazing. Summary performance it really makes me want to reread the book and i hope you please read this book. Its this this full blast takedown of the Supreme Court. Oh policing. Of Old School Ways of thinking about Racial Justice and its written with this same righteous anger that we hear from devon, but also common sense and solution focus so the book is fire, please please check it out. So i want to have a short conversation with devin and then open it up. We love to hear from from you all. So first question, i i noticed you have a kind of funny accent. Thing you talk about your your background how that informs unreasonable. Funny accent thats a funny thing accents. So im not from the us i immigrated from the us from the uk of caribbean descent and in the prologue of the book. I tell the story of my own encounters with policing and frame it quite frankly as i kind of naturalization that that policing is a way in which i was naturalized into a particular kind of black american identity and that you can think of racism as performing that particular role. So the insights that i came to in many ways were forged in my own encounters with the police and got me. Just tell the story of when you and your brothers were. So one one story involves us coming back from the airport and showing up at my sisters apartment and neighbors called the cops indicating to them that apparently black people had just entered an apartment with guns. So the way this work essentially, you know, were in the living room. Naturally someones making tea or english. What can i say . So the castle is literally going and im like, where are my brothers whats going on . So i go in the kitchen to turn off the gas so the kettle would stop and i see outside my b