Transcripts For CSPAN3 Oakland 20141228 : vimarsana.com

The that deaths of unarmed black men. Next on American History tvs reel america series, the people and the police, oakland, a 1974 documentary. Almost from the day it was founded in 1948, the folks across the bay in San Francisco have been making jokes about oakland. There is no there there. While the jokes may live on, oakland is no longer that faceless other city across the bay. Today, californias fourth largest city is a booming center of art, industry, and culture. But oaklands new glamour and prosperity are not shared equally by all of its citizens. Nearly half of the citys population is nonwhite and many are poor. They do not patronize the symphony or the museums. They dont use the coliseum or airport very much, nor do they hold their share of the jobs created by oaklands new industry, port and transportation facilities. Hey you funky old oakland town your taiown aint got no shame and most of all no pity most of oaklands black and brown citizens came here from the south during world war ii, lured by recruiters for government and private industry to work in shipyards and defense plants. After the war, the shipyards closed and many factories moved to the suburbs, leaving most nonwhite workers behind. Technology put more workers on the unemployment and welfare lines, where they were joined by newly dispossessed farmers and farm workers forced off the land by the growth of agribusiness. During the 1950s, oakland became a stagnant get out ghetto. Oaklands allwhite Police Department earned a reputation for head knocking brutality and has left a well remembered legacy of bitterness in them minds and hearts of many that lived in that time and place. I was growing up in the late 1930s and nine teen 40s, okun wait 1930s and 1940s. The Oakland Police were perceived as brutal and there was fear on the part of black people. I remember one specific situation where several young blacks were being apprehended by the police, they went into their homes to put them up for some alleged crime, and i remember one particular Police Officer kicking one of the young people, couldnt have been more than 13 or 14 years old. I think that the black panthers raised a significant issue. That was the brutality of the police when they came into the black community. The police were in the same position as most of government not being responsive to citizens needs. In our recruit schools, we inculcated for many years what i would characterize as a gung ho Law Enforcement orientation. We taught them laws of arrest, search and seizure, and patrol procedure practices which could only result in an officer oriented in a very narrow Law Enforcement way. As we went about this Police Department as an operational style in the 1950s and some part of the 1960s, stopping people on various pretexts, a mandate from our Police Department itself. We incurred very, very bad relationships in our communities. Today, there is a new relationship developing between the people of oaklands ghettos and police. Police officials hold regular meetings in the community and they are well received. This is one of the greatest things i have seen in oakland in my 30 years here. I never thought i would see the day back in 1947 or 1948 that police would let you sit down and criticize them. It is our responsibility to get out in the community. We will be here if you want us. Im here to assure you that those men that you see sitting here and those that work 24 hours a day in the seven days a week in the oakland Police Department will take a humanistic approach to policing. I do care how frustrated our policemen happened to be because theyre working hard, i want to see every citizen treated with dignity. I would say there has been tremendous change on the part of the police. I think theyre moving away from the head knocking, brutal, physical approach and trying to be more Public Relations oriented, more communityoriented, and hopefully more sensitive and liberal to their approach to modern Law Enforcement. I see some dramatic effects. I was here when the case was juxtaposed in very hard terms. In a moment, a look at how things are going in oakland these days between the people and police. Run run dont let the sun go down on you in this here town or else you are going to go to jail boy or you might wind up getting dropped six feet down i joined the department in about 1965. It was very different from what it is now. I think we were a lot more aggressive. I dont care for the word harassment. I would say there was a time when we were a head knocking department. There are about 700 men in the oakland Police Department, an overwhelming number are white and most live in the suburbs outside the city. Patrolman john dixon joined the department after a stint with the coast guard. He grew up in hollister, is a family man, and likes his work. To this extent, hes a typical Oakland Policeman. In the past there was a quota system. If it wasnt down on paper, but it did exist. You were expected to write a number of citations. If you are a good policeman, you made a certain number of arrests. The quota system had to result in more aggressive policing. They had to go out of their way to find certain things and maybe they went a little far. We were trying to produce numbers. In arrest, and just about every way. What has happened is that chief gains said no more quota system. There isnt any today. That is fantastic. We spend more time today talking to people in a lot of situations where they probably would have gone to jail before. I mean a lot of situations. Prior to 1968, mid 1960s at least, the philosophy of the department was to operate basically as the legalistic style of Police Department. Gradually, through the late 1960s and early 1970s, we began to change the style of operation into what is referred to now as a Service Style of a Police Department. George hart is oaklands new police chief. He assumed leadership of the department in october 1973 when chief Charles Gaines retired after 27 years on the force. The change came about because it had to come about. The community was saying to us i think, that we want a Police Organization which services the entire community in a fair and impartial manner. We want a Police Organization in which we can have confidence. First, we would like to get you to think as well as you can about the way you looked at police work and the way of operating before you even started recruit training. The new style is a product of an unusual collaboration between the police and social scientists. One scientist is j douglas grant, former chief of research for the prison system. Grant and his colleagues have been successful in helping criminals overcome their own violent behavior through a process of selfstudy. In 1969, they convinced Police Officials that by helping violence prone policeman study their own behavior, they could reverse the spiral of violence between the police and the people of oakland. Former chief charles gaine agreed that it was worth a try and they went to work with a grant from the federal government. Today, the selfstudy process is carried on by the departments conflict management section. At the time, there was no regard to the quality of the work. It was just basically a numbers game. One idea that developed early in the selfstudy process was that of tape recording actual confrontations between Oakland Police officers and potentially violent citizens. The recordings have proved invaluable in understanding how to avoid conflict and are now used in training new Police Officers in the art of discretionary decisionmaking. A Police Officer probably has the broadest powers of discretion in carrying out his functions than any other citizen. What we are going to do today is sit down and listen to to two patrolmen as they intervene in a family dispute. We are not saying that everything they do in this case is the right way to do it. They made certain decisions throughout this tape. We are going to sit down and critique them stepbystep. This is an actual street incident. It is a real policeman and real people. Some individual officers when they come into the recruit academy feel that they are coming in to be trained to be a tremendous crimefighter. They dont realize thats only a portion of their training, how to combat crime. A lot of it is how to do with people, how to solve their everyday problems, and meet the needs of the community. All right then, arrest me i would kind of like to talk about it first look, man. That is my wife. You aint got nothing to do with it. You understand me . What we are trying to provide, promote, is an officer who does his job, does it well does it efficiently, who does in fact produce, but who at the same time is a very humanistic individual. Who understands his community who understands himself and his department. He told you in 20 different ways what the problem is. Does anybody know one of the officers has already identified it. He wants her back and she doesnt want him back. I am not telling them not to use force because there are some times when they must use force. Im saying that there are all different ways to establish your authority as a Police Officer. You can establish authority by humor. You can establish it by showing concern, pure physical force is not an absolute. That is not the only way one controls the situation. What i need is a woman, man. I cant seem to find one. I am looking for it in this one but i cant seem to find it. Whats the problem . He is screaming it to you. It seems like it might be sex. [laughter] a very simple thing. He started screaming it. Lane old sex. Plain old sex. But the Oakland Police do more than just talk about violence prevention in their academy classes. Each time an officer must use force in the performance of his duty, it is reported to a computer. Periodically the computer selects those officers with an unusually high number of critical incidents. They are then invited to appear before a panel of fellow officers who review and in meticulous detail his handling of situations that resulted in violence. We are asking you to be very candid with us. We are asking you to admit your mistakes. Every guy on this panel has made some of the same mistakes that you have made, none of us are perfect. What we are trying to do is find better ways of doing things. The Action Review Panel is both voluntary and confidential, no record is kept, and no disciplinary action is involved. An officer may sit for as long as eight hours while his peers question and analyze his actions, his judgment, his personal attitudes even his , mannerisms. Yet, since the panels were started in 1971, no man has refused to participate. The moderator of the Action Review Panels is officer bob crawford of the conflict management section. In this case, the first ever filmed, the man in the hot seat is officer gerhardt. Details, complain and state the suspect had an illegitimate child three weeks ago and refuses to stay home and cared for the child. The suspect had to be physically subdued and taken into custody. What happened . I dont remember. You realize things like this are official records that can be subpoenaed in court. You could be on court being sued. Somebody could hit you with a report just like that. Two years later you would be looking at the guy and saying i had to physically subdue a 17yearold girl who had only been out of the hospital for three weeks after having given birth to a baby and i dont remember a thing about it. It would have you looking very poorly. He has sat on panels before. I think it struck him being different to be sitting in that seat rather than in one of the other seats. You couldve had your head blown off. If he had a machine gun, he would have killed both of us. Listen to what hes saying. I am. I know that. I dont care how great you are. Email i see had a small man he realized he had a small mans complex. He felt he had to take the 1st avenue. I wanted to let you know about what the whole object of these panels are. When someone shows up with one after another were supposed to , look into why, and i wanted to ask a question, is he one of these men . Hes not as big in stature as some of us and hes he has a small mans complex. He is taking it out on the kids. The thing about size is i am five foot eight. I was only 155 then. Im not defensive about it. I dont think i am. I am quicker to act because i am aware of my size, especially when a person is bigger than me. If there was no panel and no one to call attention to the fact that an officer did have a particular problem, whether bs it be a small man complex or what have you, he would act out in the street and it would be misread. I have seen a real hard anegg sit here and reject the panel and then go out into a different job than he was before. You pointed out some things like that i was aware of sort of halfway and did not think it was really showing too much. Its good to have other people tell you something that you and you are already aware of because you will make a better effort to control it or whatever, i think. That panel was good. If there were a bunch of turkeys sitting here, i would have left a long time ago. And you would have heard about it in the locker room. The suspect is considered 5150, should be considered armed and dangerous, both are wanted for conspiracy and forgery. Since the inception of the Action Review Panel and other selfstudy techniques there have been a dramatic drop in the number of conflicts between the police and the people of oakland. Resistance to arrest and assaults on Police Officers dropped as much as 30 in a single year while citizen complaints against Police Officers have been cut in half. But policemen are traditionalists, many still admire the ideal of the supercop, the tough, resourceful, courageous law man who always catch the crook. Some of oaklands finest are still uncomfortable with their departments new style and philosophy. It is basically two parts to the job, one part is enforcing the law and the second part is lets say helping people, our relationships with people are better than they used to be, but as far as enforcement of the law, we are slacking off. That is part of the job. John dixon works in the hardcore ghetto of west oakland. The neighborhood is very poor and almost exclusively black. It is not an easy beat for a white policeman working alone. You have to be realistic. Your child may go to some more as a result of my talking to her. I dont think he can go through no more than any other kid on the street. Im of two minds, we are dealing with the people in a much better frame of mind, the results are much better when i go into peoples houses, you dont get as much as a hassle as you used to. Yet at the same time you are , still respected as a policeman. The public accepts us more. I get a lot more cooperation. You find out that more people are at least willing to give you information on the side than they were before. More people are inclined to give you a helping hand, when before, very few people were. My car has not been involved in the burglary. I remember when i first came on the force, if you stop the car, you immediately gathered a crowd. Now you dont normally gather the crowds today, but when you do, the people dont tend to be as hostile. The quality of the arrests we are making now are much better. I think that we are getting lethargic. We are sitting back and accepting the fact that we are a Service Oriented apartment which i think people are inclined to think we are at the beck and call of people. That is what a lot of us are doing, sitting back waiting to be called. Unless you want to run him here. We are more Community Relations orientated, more service type department, and i think at the expense of enforcement, Law Enforcement. The socalled Service Style is not per se a week approach to a weak approach to the problem at all. If anything, it is a stronger approach. You can have an effective, alert Police Department which does in fact engage in heads up police work, aggressive patrol. The is what the community wants. That is why we exist. Would you like the department to go back to the head knocking, legalistic department it used to be . Nope. I dont think anybody wants it to go back that far. Not that far. Why . It would create the same old problem as we had before, i a hostile society, problems on the simplest of things, just talking to people in the streets, i dont think we would have as much success if we went back to that. I believe more than anything that the officers in this department do in fact want to do and do in fact accomplish a very capable level of policing the oakland community. I believe that they support totally the concept that any Police Organization can only operate in a fair and lawful manner. Do you think you have to make a choice between Community Relations and good enforcement . No. They can work handinhand. Its obvious they can. Hey you, mr. Police you better heed the warning because the handwriting is on the wall hey you, mr. Police chief you better heed the peoples morning call because the handwriting is on the wall so have fun while you can, just like the wall of jericho you are bound to fall