Nypd commissioner bill brattons resignation comes at a time when the rift between Police Officers and the public, especially communities of color, is wider and deeper than ever. Will his departure ease the tension and provide an opportunity for a real shift in policecommunity relations . Joining us today, tamika mallory, recognized as one of the next generation of civil rights leaders. She serves on the board of the gathering for justice, a socialjustice organization. Also with us, noel leader, thank you both for being with us this afternoon. Thank you for having us. I want each of you to answer this question. Tamika, ill start with you. Brattons resignation a good thing . Absolutely. Definitely a good thing for those of us who know that he shouldnt have been hired in the first place. But, you know, now its a personnel change, and we still have policy changes that have to actually be put into effect. So, its good that hes gone, but theres so much more work to do that we really can only let that be a oneday story. You had concerns, as tamika mentioned, about his hiring from the start. Yes, first, he shouldnt have been hired. Hes the architect of the abusive stop, question, and frisk. When he came to new York City Police department, dont forget, he manipulated out the two hires, black and latino chiefs in the department, pi . Eiro and banks. Dont forget, also, his record of hiring africanamerican Police Officers in the academy is the lowest its been in administrations. And when asked why is he hiring so few africanamericans in the they have criminal records. Absolutely. He called rappers thugs. He said that individuals in the black lives Matter Movement were bigots. This is the individual who promoted the officer that was involved in the most horrific police killing, amadou diallo, to the rank of sergeant. This police commissioner. To the rank of sergeant. This police commissioner. So, clearly, this him saying that hes attempting to repair relations, if you look at this actions or his history as police commissioner, he definitely day, its an answer to our prayers that hes living. Right, right. And the hope is that he will retire and so will broken windows policing the theory of broken windows so will quotas, which still exist. I dont care how many times they tell you that that quota system has been eliminated from the police department. It has not, and the proof of that is at the nypd 12, which are 12 one lady and 11 gentlemen who are suing their current Police Officers, on the discriminatory practices. And you actually have to go to court to fight against that in this day and age. So, brattons walked out of the picture. Enter the new police commissioner, a lifelong new yorker, Career Police officer, james oneill. Talk about that choice. Are you encouraged by it . Well, i know chief oneill. I think chief oneill, on the surface, is a very nice guy. I do have to question how decision. Why is it that we live in a city that is overwhelmingly diverse and we still have a white man who has been appointed to this position . Who else was in the running for this position . And how did he make the decision . Who did he talk to . And, again, when you look at and i know noel can speak to this much better. When you look at all the other lawenforcement commissionerships in this city, everyone is white white males, for the most part. Not choose someone who reflects most of the people who even got you elected on an issue that you said you were going to fix . One of the things i noticed yesterday, when they were making the announcement, chief oneill was very careful and emphatic about pointing out who his big his toplevel staff would be, and chief banks, i think, was chief banks was brought up. And then there was chief gomez. Am i saying his name right . Yeah, uhhuh. So, they seem to know that that question was coming. Right. Besides that concern that perhaps was theyre not a person of color that couldve been appointed to that position, do you feel like there is an opportunity with his appointment to work with him, to have someone really address this divide . You know, he talked a lot about some people have said, well, thats old. Its played out. What are your feelings about that . We make a distinction from being a staff member to being the actual commissioner. You know, we want africanamericans to be in that top position so perhaps he could be one of their staff members. Theres always hope when you have somebody whos appointed in a very important and decisionmaking position that youll be able to work with him. But once again, were shunned by this mayor, who received an overwhelmingly majority of votes from the africanamerican all studies say that when you want to have a good police department, it should be reflective of the community that its serving, and in this administration, it hasnt been, and it continues not to be. Right. And, i mean, i think you were speaking of ben tucker. Thank you. And why wasnt he considered . Exactly. You were supposed to be helping me. [ laughter ] you said banks. It was stuck in my head, but yes. But at the end of the day, the issue is that you cannot retrain racism. Right. Bobo the clown is the commissioner. We just want to see that theres punishment and accountability for officers who do wrong in our communities. Once that happens, whoever is the leadership, if that is the type of pressure that theyre pushing down on their rankandfile, we believe that the challenges will, in fact, be decreased. Youre never going to be able to get everyone to do the right thing, but there cant be this sense of, i throw somebody up against a wall and break their arm for no reason, nothing happens to me, and the department actll behavior. I choke eric garner to death, Daniel Pantaleo still has his job. I kick in the door of Ramarley Graham and shoot him and kill him in front of his elderly grandmother and his 6yearold brother, nothing happens. And then you look at it in the national context, we could go on with all the cases. Why would a Police Officer feel that they had any obligation to the community if they dont see their brother or sister in the department being challenged and held accountable . That oneill needs to do when he becomes commissioner to say to the community, i heard you, and were gonna start. Now, what does he need because hes walking into the job, were all skeptical. He should fire Daniel Pantaleo and richard haste, both of the officers who i just mentioned in the cases that i spoke about. Thats the first thing. And we understand that individuals just firing an individual is not gonna change everything, but it certainly sends a message to other not be tolerated. You cannot work here and practice biased policing at all. Right. That is what we want to see real action. The neighborhood policing model, we believe it can work. We talk about Community Policing all the time. So perhaps there is a way to make that model work for us. But if we notice what happened with Assemblyman Michael Blake just this last saturday, he was thrown against a fence by a Police Officer, and the only reason why we believe the issue someone else there noticed him as an assemblyman and asked him to back off. Well, the officer who made that Quick Reaction and threw him against the gate was an nco, the new Neighborhood Police off Neighborhood Community officer, i believe, is the way you describe it. So, already, the question has to be, why did that person who should know who his elected officials are, also, if youre a neighborhood Police Officer but why are using the same Excessive Force that were trying to get away from . Have the head man, the commissioner, reflecting the community, because im not too impressed with the individuals. I mean, oneill, hes been with kelly for generations. I mean, they go back to the compstat days. Hes in his inner circle. Thats why when you had this big corruption scandal, he wasnt touched. He flew up in the ranks. So you have qualified africanamericans whove been twostar chiefs over 25 years who are always shunned, and problem. And since everyone is allegedly so concerned about bridging the gap between the Africanamerican Community and Police Officers, you know, its hypocritical hypocritical to me that we never get those decisionmaking policies. cause as she stated, the solution to these problems, when an officer acts inappropriately, either they should be punished or terminated, and thats not whats happening in the bratton administration. Okay. So, barring the firing of these Police Officers, where do we start . I guess my question is, we have had this conversation i said i first met you at a march. You said, which one . Right. And it took us a while to remember, okay, which one was it . What was it about . You know, what had happened before . Instead of being in this circle all the time and for people to not feel like they have to keep screaming and banging down the door. And do you think that has made a difference and made an impression . Well, i know that you had well, first of all, yes. To stop marching. If they didnt, they wouldnt be saying things like, the black lives Matter Movement is leaderless. Theyre trying to be divisive, and the commissioner specifically used that language. Now, oneill did yesterday say one of the first things he said and i was surprised, because it came relatively early in his conversation. He said, i recognize the right of people to march. Thats part of their right as american citizens, to march and protest. Right. But he also brought that up in the s killed. Right. And that is, theyre two totally separate issues, and so, when he said that, i started getting the calls immediately with people saying, there he is, comparing the two things. We dont want anyone to die. We just want black people and brown people in this city to be safe, as well. But when you say, what are some of the steps . I mean, right now, you have the right to know act and also the right to record, which are two pieces of legislation that the city council was trying to get passed, but theres been a backroom deal cut between bratton and melissa viverito, right to know act is going to become an administrative process where we hope that those things go into the handbook, and the handbook will therefore sort of direct Police Officers on what they should be doing. The same handbook says that you cant choke someone to death, but eric garner died, so we don believe that. We believe it has to be real legislation. And thats why i always go back to who the commissioner is, because you set the precedent. You set the tone and tenor of the department. So you can have all of these laws, you can have all these rules, you can have Community Policing but if the commissioner is not sending the right message that, this is how i want my Police Officers and the community to interact, then its gonna just be political theater, and thats what we have a lot of individuals saying things that are i mean, thats easy for them to say. Everyone believes that the people have a right to march and protest, but how are you gonna administrate the police department, especially when officers act inappropriately . So it circles back to the mayor, does it not . Oh, yes. Yes. The buck stops with him. And hes told me that, you know, personally it stops with this decision, and then, lets see how this works out. Because weve got a year and some change to make a decision about whether or not we will elect him again to run this city, because this particular issue is the issue that he ran on in the beginning, and it is an issue that still exists within our communities today, so you will not be able to skirt around it just because bratton decided to resign. Okay. All right. Thank you both for being with us. This conversation i it before it is going to continue. Lets hope that the next time, theres a little bit more progress. Absolutely. And thank you. Thank you both. When we come back, journalist dr. Marc lamont hill talks about his new book that explores the intersection of race, class and public policy. . . Police shootings of unarmed minorities, mass incarceration, and tainted Drinking Water in flint, michigan, are some of the issues explored in the new book, nobody casualties of americas war on the vulnerable, from chronicle of historical events and the influence of class, race, gender, and public policy. Here today is journalist and author marc lamont hill. So nice to finally meet you. You too. Im excited to be here. Im a big fan. Im a big fan of you and the show. And you are very kind. And now i love you even more. [ chuckles ] and this book is not exactly something that you should be reading at night before you go to bed. Thats probably right. Okay. Because i first of all, i couldnt put a mind. And i was so impressed just with how quickly you were able to marshal your thoughts and, in a sense, connect the dots. Yeah. Which, i think, a lot of us sometimes have a problem doing. You know, we see things as individual events instead of the broader context. Im gonna ask you first, the title nobody where did that come from . I was in ferguson august 10, 2014, the day after mike brown who were sort of telling their stories of what it meant to see mike brown laying there for four hours. Mmhmm. I mean, he was there for four hours, and keisha, one of the residents, talked about this. She said, he was there for four hours. She described to me what it meant to watch this kid who she knew and had grown up around and little kids, 8 years old, 6 years old, watched him laying on the ground, adults who would send him to the store for cigarettes or candy they all saw this baby laying on the ground for four hours, no sheet of that time, blood going through the cracks in the concrete, 95 degrees, and you could kind of smell the heat and the death in the air. This sort of trauma. And she said, they left him out there like he aint belong to nobody. Like he aint belong to nobody. And that sense of nobodyness lingered with me, cause i thought, who should he belong to . Then i looked and saw that the Normandy School district, one of the worst in the country, had failed him. And emerson electric, the local factory, which provided jobs for most people in ferguson, had pruittigoe, in st. Louis, had really failed as a project, and as a result, people didnt have access to good housing. And so all the institutions that are supposed to protect us and make life easier were absent for him. And so, in many ways, he was treated like nobody long before he met Darren Wilson at canfield green. So, using that title suggests, in a sense, a lot of the people we know their names now and many we dont, whether its trayvon or. That the system has kind of treated them like nobody. Thats exactly right. Theres this weird thing about being black in america. On the one hand, youre invisible, right . Youre not seen. Your plight, your misery, your suffering is not seen. If youre in flint, michigan, and you have lead in your water, its because people cant see you. Mmhmm. Youre invisible to politicians. They say you dont vote enough or youre invisible to people because you dont spend enough or because you know, whatever the issue might be, youre invisible. And on the other hand, youre hypervisible. You walk down the street, Just Columbia University do, but when you wear that hoodie. Yeah. Its dangerous. Youre hypervisible. They cant avoid you. And so its this weird tension of being black in america, male or female, trans or cis, straight or gay, we all are wrestling with this stuff. You know, your book kind of seems to me to take the point that the system is almost designed to make the plight of certain people the most vulnerable, which tends to be their circumstances worse. You know, is it your feeling that its deliberate, or is it just that i think what do you call it . You call it the sort of intersectionality, where its, you know, maybe racism and sexism and elitism is so ingrained, these tendencies are so ingrained that its not like everybody had a conversation. But everybodys kind of feeling multiple forms of oppression coming at you at the same time. Thats exactly right. And its important to think about it in that way, as a systemic problem. Too often, we talk about good apples and bad apples, good people and bad people. And that almost is beside the point. Even people who have the best of intentions, they can only do so much. With law enforcement, we seem to have some discomfort doing that. But if we were talking about another institution, say education, we would all concede, based on everything we can see, that Public Education isnt working, right . We want it to work. But the system right now, the Education System isnt working. Doesnt mean we hate all teachers. Doesnt mean that all teachers dont care. Doesnt mean the teachers do a bad job. It means that the system is designed in such a way that even at their best, theyre not able to serve the people in the way that we want. Im simply saying that the same thing exists for law enforcement. And when we look at all of these systems, theyre all part of a bigger american project. And america itself is founded on exploitation of labor. Its founded on the white supremacist logic that says all of these things are baked into the system. And so its comforting at night to say, the system is broken. We can fix this thing, though. But the truth is, the systems not broken. The system is working exactly the way its designed to do. So instead of saying, the system is broken, and lets make it work, lets say, the system is working. Lets break it. And thats what im trying to do. Im trying to give us the intellectual ammunition to understand how we got here so that we can figure a way out of this thing. And thats why, in the book, with recent events. Absolutely. That these arent just accidents. Yeah. You have to do that, you know, because otherwise, particularly this generation of young people, if its disconnected from the history, theyll think that mike brown was the first person to be killed or Trayvon Martin or sean bell or wh