0:00

It's hard to understand the culture of policing

0:02

in America from the outside.

0:07

There's an informal code among police

0:09

officers, the blue wall

0:11

of silence. And

0:14

it's pretty much what it sounds like An

0:17

09 that encourages cops to

0:19

not talk about what happens at work,

0:22

to protect their own, really. Lots

0:26

of people have studied the 09, who

0:28

they are, what they believe in,

0:30

and how they see the people they're meant to

0:33

protect and serve. But

0:35

it remains a system filled with problems

0:38

and one that's opaque if you're not

0:40

a cop. That's

0:45

an issue for all kinds of reasons.

0:49

The outrage against cops and

0:51

the tension between them and civilians

0:53

has been mount thing. It hit

0:56

a breaking point in twenty twenty as everyone

0:58

knows, and its top of mind,

1:00

once again, following the

1:02

killing of Tyria Nichols last

1:04

month in Memphis. The

1:06

relationship between the police and citizens

1:09

is about as strained as it's ever been.

1:11

At least in my lifetime. So

1:14

what can we do about this? How

1:17

can we fix policing in this

1:19

country. I'm

1:23

09, and this is the gray area.

1:33

My guest today is Rosa Brooks, She's

1:36

a law professor at Georgetown University

1:38

09 spent most of her career in

1:40

the national security world. But

1:42

she became a reserve cop with the Washington

1:45

09 metro police department back

1:47

in twenty fifteen. After

1:50

graduating from the police academy Brooks

1:53

worked part time as patrol officer

1:55

from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty,

1:57

and eventually wrote a book about her experiences

2:00

called tangled up in blue, policing

2:02

the American city. As

2:05

we continue to grapple with issues of

2:07

police curtail quality and questions about

2:10

how to reform policing in the United

2:12

States, I wanted to reconnect with Brooks.

2:15

I interviewed her for Voxdock com

2:17

back in May twenty twenty one in the aftermath

2:20

of the Derek Chauvin trial. 09

2:23

knows what it's like to do the work. 09

2:25

also has enough perspective to understand

2:28

what's broken. 09

2:31

started out by talking about what

2:33

motivated her to become a cop

2:36

in the first place.

2:41

You know, it was the world weirdest sabbatical

2:43

project, I had timed everything wrong,

2:45

so I just finished a different book when

2:47

I got us a radical and I was sort of flailing

2:49

around looking for things to do.

2:52

And I had heard about this reserve officers

2:54

program, and it had just seemed so

2:56

strange to me that

2:58

a big city police department would

3:00

let you volunteer to be

3:02

a cop as nuts, you know, and

3:05

send you through the 09 academy and give you a

3:07

badge and a gun and arrest powers. And

3:09

I was so struck by how strange

3:11

this was, and I and I and I worked

3:13

at the sort of margins of policing

3:15

issues at different points in my life. But

3:17

it's such an opaque culture to people who are outside

3:19

of it. It's not unlike the 09, you

3:22

know, unless you happen to be married

3:24

to a police officer or have someone in your immediate

3:26

family. Most of us don't know anything

3:28

about police. We think we do

3:30

because we see them on TV and we see them on the streets.

3:33

But 09 don't really know,

3:35

well, what are they taught? How are they trained?

3:37

What are they say to themselves when they get up in the morning

3:39

about, you know, what story are they telling themselves

3:42

about what their job is and why

3:44

they do it. So it just 09 like an incredible opportunity

3:46

to be on the inside of this very opaque culture.

3:49

I have always been fascinated by how cops 09

3:52

of themselves and their role. And

3:54

I wanna know what you learned

3:56

about cops when you became one. You know, what does

3:58

the story cops tell about themselves to

4:01

themselves? Well, there

4:03

are several and they kind of interlock.

4:06

One thing I discovered was when you asked most

4:08

police officers, why they became police officers.

4:11

There are two stories that you hear

4:13

over and over and over again. One of those

4:15

stories is I or someone very close

4:18

to me was a victim of a serious crime.

4:20

And I want to protect other

4:22

people from having that happen to them

4:24

or help them if it happens to them. That's

4:27

one story and the other story you hear over and

4:29

over is I was heading in the wrong

4:31

direction. I was going to end up in

4:33

jail and a police officer took

4:35

me under his wing or cut me a

4:37

break and gave me some advice or became

4:39

a mentor and it changed my life

4:41

and I want to do that for other 09. And

4:44

I say that because I think there

4:46

are people who are bullies who become cops

4:48

because they want to be bullies with legal

4:50

authority in a gun. But the vast

4:52

majority of police officers go

4:55

into the occupation for pretty idealistic

4:57

reasons, and that's very central

5:00

to their image of themselves that they don't

5:02

get up thinking I'm one of the bad guys.

5:04

They get up thinking I am

5:06

one of the good guys. I am in this

5:08

occupation to protect

5:10

and help 09. And and that belief

5:12

is really quite deep. They then

5:15

often get very cynical however -- Yeah.

5:17

-- as they go through their careers.

5:20

And partly, of course, that's because

5:22

people don't call nine eleven when they're 09.

5:25

They call nine eleven when something is

5:27

really wrong and they're angry, they're in

5:29

crisis, something terrible has just happened.

5:32

So police see the worst of people

5:34

over and over and over and again 09 single

5:36

day. They see people at their most

5:38

horrific. They see people who are drunk.

5:40

They see parents beating their children. They see

5:43

domestic violence they see, stabings,

5:45

they see children who are dead of

5:47

overdose, you know, it's just and they can get

5:49

09, very cynical, and it's easy I think for

5:51

them to start Illing. I don't know, are these

5:54

people even worth helping? That

5:56

attitude can kind of invade them.

5:58

You know, I think there are couple of other

6:00

pieces they get inculcated in

6:03

them at the academy and it stays with them

6:05

throughout their careers, this sense of

6:07

they're in constant danger. They live in a society

6:09

where everybody and their brother has sixteen guns

6:12

between them and any

6:14

encounter could turn lethal in a millisecond.

6:17

And that really affects how they go through

6:19

the world, that sense of people

6:22

hate me, and I'm in constant

6:24

danger. And then add to that in

6:26

the last few years, all of

6:28

the media attention on police killings.

6:30

Yep. This country has way too many

6:32

police Illing. It's insane. It's terrible.

6:35

But that being said, studies suggest

6:37

that the vast majority of them will never even point

6:39

their weapon at someone in their entire career,

6:42

much less shoot someone, much less kill someone.

6:44

And so the average police officer tends

6:46

to feel like, I am very misunderstood.

6:49

Our occupation is very misunderstood. Everybody

6:51

thinks we're these brutal thugs. I've never killed anybody.

6:53

I, you know, I don't wanna kill anybody. And

6:56

that sense of being embattled and misunderstood,

6:59

then also, you know, you get that initial idealism,

7:02

the cynicism, the

7:03

fear, and the sense of being misunderstood. Yeah,

7:06

we're definitely gonna talk about the training and

7:08

the mindset and how that is woven

7:10

into the culture. But you do make an

7:12

important point and that is just the

7:14

brute fact that 09 a cop is a really

7:16

hard

7:16

job. We gotta figure out how to do it better,

7:19

but it is a really hard job. And we're in

7:21

this moment. There's a lot of anti

7:23

police sentiment --

7:24

Yeah. -- and a lot of distrust. Towards the

7:26

police, a lot of which has been earned.

7:29

Do cops feel justly

7:31

villainized at this moment? Because I have to imagine

7:33

if they do, that very much changes the

7:35

way they see and do their

7:38

jobs.

7:39

They don't buy and large. I mean, obviously,

7:41

I think it's important to say that cops are

7:44

humans and they're not homogeneous. Yeah.

7:46

I've made some generalizations. They don't apply to

7:49

09. But that being said,

7:51

I think the average cop is part of that

7:53

feeling of being misunderstood. The average

7:55

cop would probably say, 09 is

7:57

blaming all police because of a few bad apples.

8:00

Most police officers are

8:03

not gonna go the next step and say,

8:05

well, you know, maybe there's something about

8:07

systemic racism and our role structurally,

8:10

which also is part of the problem. You know,

8:12

some do, some do, absolutely. You know, I

8:14

know a lot police officers do, but think that

8:17

next move is not one that comes

8:19

naturally. You know, I have a lot of

8:21

police officer friends who are on Facebook

8:23

and just looking at their comments about the

8:25

killing of 09 Nichols in Memphis there's

8:28

a tremendous amount of those

8:30

officers should go to jail. How could

8:32

they have been hired in the first place? People like

8:34

that make it hard for everyone. They make

8:36

it hard for us to do our jobs. So

8:38

very often, that's their sense is that

8:40

most of us are good. There are few bad

8:42

apples and they make it hard for everybody else.

8:45

You said something to me last time

8:48

we spoke and I just wanted to I wanna

8:50

read it to you if that's okay and just have you

8:52

clarify it. And you actually alluded to

8:54

this a second ago. You said quote, I see two

8:56

profound truths that are intention with

8:58

one another. One is that policing in America

9:00

perpetuates extremely unjust socioeconomic

9:04

divisions, particularly along lines of

9:06

race, and policing in America is

9:08

stunningly violent compared to policing elsewhere.

9:10

But there's another profound truth which is that

9:12

the overwhelming majority of cops will never

9:15

even point their weapon at another person

9:17

Illing their entire career much less

9:19

shoot someone. I'd love to hear more about

9:21

why these truths are intention

9:24

and how that complicates our broader understanding

9:27

about 09?

9:28

Yeah. I mean, most

9:30

of 09, and this is one of the dirty little

9:32

secrets of policing. Most of

9:34

policing does not involve crime. Most

9:36

of what most police officers do

9:39

most of the time involves responding

9:42

to people complain

9:44

because their neighbor's party is too noisy.

9:47

There are kids hanging out in the back alley 09 they're

9:49

scared to go out and put the trash out because they're worried

9:51

that these kids might have bad intentions

9:53

and might attack them or something. There

9:56

are people who are upset because their neighbors, you

9:58

know, leaving crack pipes in the hallway, their

10:00

domestic disputes, parents

10:02

are mad that their kids didn't come home on time.

10:05

People are mad that their boyfriend didn't

10:07

pay his share of the rent. And it's

10:09

things like that. And because

10:12

we live in a society that

10:14

has largely abandoned

10:17

poor communities and particularly poor communities

10:19

of color, because we live in a society

10:21

that has radically, drastically, embarrassingly

10:24

underfunded 09 important

10:26

social service from education to mental

10:28

health care, to transportation, to

10:31

job 09, the police

10:33

are often the only people available to

10:35

call. Yep. So neighborhoods

10:37

are over police partly because they're

10:39

under everything else. You know? And so somebody

10:41

09 in the middle of a crisis. Even

10:43

one of these things that as I said doesn't involve a

10:45

crime. And there

10:47

is one phone number in most American

10:50

jurisdictions that you can pick up and call

10:52

and someone will show up at your door

10:54

fairly quickly. And that is nine

10:56

eleven and it's gonna be a police officer. We

10:59

don't, at this moment, in most places,

11:01

have any alternative to that.

11:03

And so from the perspective

11:06

of a police officer, they

11:08

can feel like, I spend all

11:10

day 09 day trying to help people

11:12

with their ridiculous problems which are

11:14

not what I was trained to do. And the

11:16

good ones helped with empathy and compassion

11:19

and concern and and don't feel

11:21

aggrieved by it. The bad ones do feel

11:23

That's not fair. Why should I have to do this? I'm not

11:25

a social worker. I'm not a medic. I'm not whatever.

11:28

But either way, police feel like

11:30

I'm not running around looking for people to shoot.

11:33

That's 09. On the contrary,

11:35

I go where I'm told to go. I

11:37

didn't create this system. I'd

11:40

didn't decide, hey, let's under fund education

11:42

or whatever. I didn't decide, let's

11:44

have these particular rules and regulations.

11:47

I go where I'm told and where I'm told to go

11:49

is where people in community call nine

11:51

eleven and ask me to go. And so

11:53

there's that sense of feeling misunderstood.

11:56

And I think the thing about structural

12:00

racism and economic inequality is

12:02

that It's hard to

12:04

see. You know, it's really easy to villainize

12:07

a person, and it's really hard to

12:09

villainize ten and

12:11

small decisions that cumulatively add

12:13

up to a situation where

12:15

people are hopeless and poor and have mental

12:17

health issues that go unresolved for years and

12:20

years and substance abuse issues. And

12:22

so for police, I think they can start

12:24

feeling like, what's matter with these

12:26

people. Why don't they just kind of pull their socks up and get

12:28

their act together? And look at all those

12:30

other people out there, CNN, who think

12:32

I'm this bad guy, when all I do

12:35

is I spend my time cleaning up other people's

12:37

messes. You know, that being

12:39

said, roughly a thousand people a year

12:41

are killed by police in the United States.

12:44

Some of those killings are legally justified.

12:46

You know, some of those really are self defense

12:49

or defense of others. Others of those

12:51

shootings and 09, unfortunately, the majority

12:53

of them, the vast majority are probably preventable,

12:55

and some of them are straight out

12:57

homicides by police. But

13:00

there are seven hundred and fifty thousand

13:02

police officers in the country. A

13:04

tiny fraction of them tend to be

13:06

involved in excessive force cases.

13:09

And so for most police

13:11

officers, that feels

13:13

like that's got nothing to

13:15

do with 09. Why don't people like

13:18

me? And it's very hard to see two things.

13:20

I think one, it's very hard to see that even

13:22

if it's very rare, that

13:25

the way the occupation is structured contributes

13:28

to that thousand ish number and that's

13:30

still a very high number compared to

13:32

every other country in the world. Yeah. But also

13:34

that it's not just the dead

13:37

09. You know, it's all the people who get yelled

13:39

at, who get humiliated, who get frisked when they

13:41

were just mining their own business. It's

13:43

all the people who have a thousand smaller

13:45

interactions that are painful

13:48

and remind them of inequality.

13:50

I love what you said a minute ago. I just wanna

13:52

flag it and then we'll keep on rolling here. People

13:54

are over pleased because they're under

13:56

everything

13:57

else.

13:58

Yeah. That's a technical term. They're under everything

14:00

else. That's what we call it in the legal academy.

14:02

That captures a lot. This is where

14:04

this actually intersects with the

14:06

sort of defund the police movement. Yep.

14:08

Most cops don't want to be defunded, but

14:11

if you ask a cop, are you the right

14:13

people to be doing ABCD

14:15

that you spend seventy five percent of your time doing,

14:17

they would go, of course not, why can't

14:19

the city fund those other things

14:21

so I don't have to be doing them?

14:23

I do wanna talk about how the profession

14:26

is structured though. Of course, there's

14:28

a discussion to be had here about the culture

14:30

of policing and how it's broken. And

14:33

think helpful place to start

14:35

is with the militarization of policing.

14:37

And a lot of the discourse as you know

14:40

focuses on the gear and

14:42

the hardware and the tactics, and that's all

14:44

worth knowing. But I know you the

14:47

more profound problem

14:49

here is how police departments are

14:51

organized. Can you say a bit about that?

14:53

Sure. Yeah. They tend to be

14:56

09 that are modeled on military command structures.

14:59

You know, so there's a commander, their

15:02

captains, their lieutenants, and sergeants, and

15:04

then the lowly patrol officers beneath

15:06

them, and those commanders

15:08

are themselves in a hierarchy that goes up to

15:10

assistant chiefs and chiefs and so forth.

15:13

So it tends to be a very rigid

15:15

and hierarchical organizational structure.

15:18

The training in most jurisdictions is

15:20

kind of like a a bad character picture

15:22

of a 09 eighties marine boot camp.

15:25

I mean, the military boot camps are not as boot

15:27

camp ish as many police academies are

15:29

anymore because the military figured out

15:31

that maybe not a great way to train people

15:33

if you want them to be developing critical

15:36

thinking

15:36

skills. Can you just give a little color there in terms

15:38

of, like, just so people have a visual? Like, when you say

15:40

they're training, like, nineteen eighty's Marine Boot

15:42

Camp. Is it the weapons they're using? What

15:44

are they actually doing? Well, if anybody

15:46

saw the movie full metal jacket or things like

15:48

that where you've got the drill sergeant 09 screaming.

15:51

You maggots, get down, give me fifty.

15:54

You know, there's a little bit of that. And

15:56

DC is not by any stretch.

15:58

It's not by any stretch the worst. In fact, it's probably

16:00

one of the better ones. You know, it's a relatively

16:03

progressive police department. But even

16:05

so, the rules at the academy

16:07

are you don't, other than to

16:10

greet people by saying, you know, good morning, sir.

16:12

Good morning, ma'am. Recruits do

16:14

not speak and less spoken to. If

16:16

they do something wrong, you know, boots aren't

16:18

shined right? Or they they it's, you know, often

16:20

punishment based. It's get down and do more

16:22

push ups, or you've gotta run around

16:24

the academy five times. So

16:26

it's very heavy emphasis on

16:29

hierarchy, discipline, and

16:31

punishment. A lot of Illing.

16:34

But are they play acting soldiers 09

16:36

when they're going through these academies? Yeah,

16:38

to some extent. And 09, I

16:40

think it's fair to say that the people who

16:43

police officers who previously were in the military

16:45

often the people who were rolling their eyes most

16:47

at this. I bet. And so we're saying, yeah, we don't do

16:50

this in the marines anymore. This is silly.

16:52

Yeah. Okay, find whatever. You want me to do

16:54

more push ups. I'll do more push ups. You know, and

16:56

needless to say, I I think it's it's just such a

16:58

terrible message. Right? Because the message

17:00

of being in the Police 09, being

17:03

told you don't speak until you're spoken to, you

17:05

say, sir, and ma'am, you get yelled out

17:07

a lot and if you do wrong, you're punished with

17:09

physical pain, push ups or running or whatever

17:11

it might be. That message is

17:13

that people who have power

17:16

can inflict pain on people

17:18

with less power. Yeah. And then if

17:20

police officers go out into the community and

17:22

take that message with them and most of

17:24

them don't, But too many of them

17:27

do. That translates into a lot of

17:29

people who they're screaming at or shoving and

17:31

not really caring very much. And again, I

17:33

don't think that's true of

17:35

most police officers, but

17:37

that's not the same as saying it's

17:39

because they're just a few bad apples. You

17:41

know, it's not most police officers because luckily

17:43

most people manage to come through that kind

17:45

of training with more of their humanity intact,

17:48

but it's a kind of training that

17:51

could not be better designed to

17:53

produce people who will be abusive

17:56

towards the general

17:57

public. I think that's right. One

17:59

of the questions for me is

18:02

can cops train

18:04

like warriors and dress like warriors

18:06

and behave like warriors without thinking

18:09

like warriors without thinking of themselves

18:11

as soldiers on a battlefield

18:14

fighting an enemy. Yeah. Well, one

18:16

of the most influential short

18:18

articles in the policing universe of the last

18:20

twenty years or so was a think piece that

18:23

was done by woman named Su Rah and was published

18:25

09, I think is a white paper by Harvard's Kennedy School.

18:28

And Su Rah is the former

18:30

commander of the Washington State

18:32

09 academy, trained all their state law enforcement

18:35

agents, and she's a former sheriff in Kings

18:37

County, Washington. So she'd spent, you know, years

18:39

as an officer herself. And her

18:41

paper was called 09 versus guardians.

18:44

And she really took issue with the sort

18:46

of warrior mentality and said, we

18:48

need to try to reconfigure

18:50

09 training in police organizations to

18:53

get police to think of themselves as guardians

18:55

--

18:55

Yeah. -- rather than 09. And thinking

18:57

of yourself as guardian does not mean

18:59

that you don't train in defensive

19:02

tactics. It does not mean you don't learn how

19:04

to shoot a gun. It does not mean you don't

19:06

learn how to do those But it

19:08

means that we place much, much, much more emphasis

19:10

on saying to you, you know, those are the

19:12

absolute last resorts and what you should

19:14

be thinking is that you're out there to be a protector.

19:17

And every now and then a protector will have to

19:19

use course of means, but your

19:21

primary job is to keep people

19:23

safe ensure people's well-being,

19:25

and keep them safe. And I think

19:27

that that launched a conversation with in

19:30

policing that is still going on. That's really important

19:32

one. And one of the points that Sohrab

19:34

makes is that in her program

19:36

that she ran in Washington State, they

19:39

actually increased the amount of time

19:41

spent on defensive tactics

19:44

and her argument was part of the reason

19:46

that so many police officers pull out their

19:48

guns is that they're scared. They

19:50

don't think they can handle themselves 09,

19:53

and they think they need to pull out their gun to even

19:55

the odds. And her take was the more

19:57

we give them the physical self confidence to

20:00

I'm okay. You know, I'm not gonna be

20:02

beaten to a pulp. You know, I can handle myself.

20:05

The less likely they are to panic

20:07

and pull out that

20:08

gun. Yeah. I mean, you you talk about

20:10

this in your book, you know, a lot of police culture

20:12

is built on this. Niff that the

20:14

job is extremely dangerous and

20:16

that, you know, there's no such thing as

20:18

a routine call. Right? Like, you could be shot and

20:20

Illing. At any moment, at any random

20:22

traffic stop. And you you talk about how that's kinda

20:25

true and misleading at the same time. It is

20:27

true in a sense, it is an extremely dangerous

20:29

job and comps two hit shot and

20:32

and Illing, but it's also misleading in

20:34

the sense that that mindset, that cynicism

20:36

and the kind of hardening that it produces

20:39

can lead you to 09 danger

20:41

and aggression preemptively where

20:43

it isn't there. And that can become

20:45

self fulfilling and create lethal

20:48

situations that did not have to happen.

20:50

Yeah, absolutely. 09, policing

20:52

is a dangerous job relative to accountants

20:54

and law professors, but it

20:56

actually doesn't even make the list of the top ten

20:58

most dangerous occupations in the

21:00

US. That's

21:01

worth just sitting with just for a second. Say that

21:03

one more time because that Illing will surprise people.

21:05

Okay. 09 does not even make

21:07

the list of the top ten most dangerous occupations

21:10

in the United States. Which are things

21:12

like being a roofer. It's a really

21:14

bad idea of your roofer folks because

21:16

people fall off those roofs and they die.

21:18

It's a very dangerous occupation. Fishermen,

21:21

sanitation workers. You know, they're

21:23

hanging on to the backs of trucks, incredibly

21:26

dangerous jobs. 09 doesn't make

21:28

the list of the jobs where you're most likely to

21:30

die. That said, to be fair,

21:32

the sanitation workers and roofers who die

21:34

usually aren't shot or stabbed. There,

21:36

you know, they have accidents. Yeah. But even

21:38

when it comes to intentional harm,

21:41

taxi, limousine, you know, Uber drivers

21:43

are at more than twice the risk of

21:46

being homicide victims on the job

21:48

than

21:48

cops.

21:49

Jesus. And yet you don't see a kind of army

21:51

of 09 need to have Kevlar

21:53

vest and AR-15s for all

21:55

of our Uber drivers because it's so dangerous.

21:57

So it's dangerous but not nearly as

21:59

dangerous as police officers tend to imagine

22:12

How can we better prepare cops

22:14

for the realities of police work? I'll

22:16

ask Rosa Brooks about this. After

22:18

a quick break,

22:43

So is there a better way to

22:46

prepare cops to train cops so that they have

22:48

a healthier safer approach

22:50

to the job. I imagine part of the story

22:52

here is how we screen cops. Before they're even

22:55

hired. Mhmm. And I don't know if the answer

22:57

is requiring college 09. Although

22:59

my lefty roots will come out here. Because

23:01

I'm not super comfortable with legislating

23:04

blue collar workers out of any

23:06

profession. Yeah. But

23:07

I'm just thinking aloud and throwing it out there.

23:09

So there are a few studies that do suggest

23:12

that police with college degrees are less likely

23:14

to be involved in excessive force situations.

23:16

Yeah. But it's impossible to untangle that from

23:18

the fact that 09 with college degrees start

23:21

out. They're usually a little older than the other

23:23

officers.

23:23

More emotionally mature. Yeah. Because I think

23:26

you're right that there are wonderful police officers

23:28

who don't have that formal education because

23:30

the skills and the judgment really don't

23:32

have anything to do with formal education. They

23:34

have to do with problem solving abilities

23:37

and deescalation abilities and communications

23:39

skills. I do think that

23:42

when one is able to sort of shift the

23:44

frame to 09, and

23:46

emphasized to police officers, you know,

23:48

that is your most fundamental job.

23:51

Your job is to try to walk away from every

23:53

situation, leaving people

23:55

feeling herd 09 respected

23:57

and feeling like they're a little better off

23:59

than they were when you came into that situation,

24:02

that's your job. And the more academies

24:04

shift to that kind of a focus, I the

24:06

better off they are. And again, that's

24:08

not inconsistent with don't

24:11

be an idiot, you know, you don't need to walk

24:13

alone into a dark alley where you have no idea

24:15

who's in it. You know, it's the same things that we 09 all

24:17

tell. We tell our children, we tell our friends. Right?

24:20

If there is a domestic violence complaint and

24:22

the dispatcher says that there are weapons involved,

24:24

you maybe you don't walk up the front steps

24:27

09 you kind of walk around the house a little bit first

24:29

and you kind of put your ear to the window to see

24:31

if anybody's shooting before you walk in.

24:33

You know, that there are common sense things that

24:35

absolutely 09 officers need

24:37

to practice and learn how to do because,

24:40

you know, as you said, we live in a gunsaturated

24:43

09. People shoot each other. They shoot a police

24:45

officers. You know, you can't discount

24:47

those threats, but at the same time,

24:50

if you let them dominate, you're

24:52

going to end up using force a lot of times 09 you

24:54

don't have to. I think a lot of people

24:57

may not know this or may be surprised to

24:59

learn that America is actually under

25:02

09. Relative to some European

25:05

countries like France, 09

25:07

like that have more comps per capita,

25:10

but American comps are more violent. They kill

25:13

more people. Yeah. And obviously, the question

25:15

is, why is that? And there are lots of 09, I'm

25:17

sure. But there is huge caveat

25:19

here, and you just mentioned it. Which is that there are

25:21

more guns than people in America. And that's

25:23

not true in France or anyone else

25:25

that I'm aware of. Right? So the whole second amendment

25:28

thing does complicate the picture and

25:30

make the US an outlier case in in

25:32

lots of ways.

25:33

And we also have legal framework

25:35

in this country that seeks 09 permissive

25:38

towards 09, and that's part of what makes

25:40

it very difficult to hold police

25:42

officers legally accountable. Yeah.

25:44

That the court's jurisprudence very much

25:46

emphasizes, we don't want a second

25:48

guess police officers. They have to make split

25:51

second decisions. 09 going to

25:53

evaluate the use of force from the

25:55

perspective of what would a reasonable police

25:57

officer have done in that split second

26:00

And so that ends up a contributing

26:02

factor along with their decisions on

26:04

qualified immunity that

26:07

make it very hard to hold officers

26:09

accountable, and I I always tell my students,

26:12

they say, well, we think police should respect

26:14

people's constitutional rights, and

26:16

I tell them 09 officers

26:19

who respect constitutional rights as

26:21

the supreme court has interpreted them can still do

26:23

a tremendous round of harm that constitutional

26:26

in the US framework is not the

26:28

same as good. Could you just say

26:30

very briefly what Qualified Immunity means?

26:33

mean, obviously, your law professors here equipped to.

26:35

Qualified Immunity is essentially it's doctrine

26:38

created by the courts that

26:40

basically says if somebody's an official, they're an

26:42

employee of state, local, or federal government.

26:44

And they're acting in their official capacity that

26:47

09 speaking, they should be protected from

26:49

being sued, 09, for

26:52

what they did as part of their job. Of

26:54

course, then the argument as well, wait a minute.

26:56

Excessive force is not part of anybody's job,

26:59

but the court has the way they have interpreted

27:01

this as they've said. Yes, officers

27:03

can be sued in their personal 09,

27:06

and Qualified Immunity will not

27:08

kick in if what the officer did

27:10

violates a, quote, clearly a established

27:13

constitutional norm, but then

27:15

they go ahead and they define clearly established

27:17

as meaning that

27:20

a prior court in a virtually identical

27:23

case said that what they did was wrong -- Yeah. --

27:25

which in turn means that you get all these situations

27:27

where a police officer from any kind

27:29

of common sense perspective has done

27:32

something 09, clearly

27:34

wrong, and the court will look at it, and they'll

27:36

say, well, 09 don't see

27:38

that any previous court said that this was

27:40

clearly wrong in this identical situation.

27:42

So therefore, even though we think it was wrong, we don't

27:45

think it was clearly established. It

27:47

was unlawful and so the officer gets immunity

27:49

from civil

27:50

suit. Thanks for clarifying that. And look,

27:52

I don't know if there's any training. That

27:55

can prevent someone from panicking

27:57

when that fight or flight instant kicks

28:00

09. That's deep down in our Illing, but

28:02

it's still shocking. You start

28:04

looking at this, how under trained

28:07

American police are -- Yes. -- it is incredible

28:10

how little training these people have.

28:12

Yeah. And I suspect a lot of police

28:14

interactions that go wrong

28:17

are not the result of bad people out to

28:19

do bad

28:19

things. It's the result of 09 trained human

28:21

beings responding. 09

28:23

transparent people -- Yeah. -- responding badly

28:25

under duress in situations for which they

28:27

are totally

28:29

09. And that seems like a training slash

28:32

screening problem. It is, to

28:34

some extent, at 09. Yes. The

28:37

length of police training in many European countries

28:39

is three years. It's treated like a university

28:41

degree before you're out there on the 09.

28:43

In the US, most

28:45

departments, D. C. It's six months

28:47

of training New York. It's roughly the same. But there

28:50

are jurisdictions in the U. S. Where it is

28:52

six 09. Not six months. Mhmm.

28:54

Six weeks and you're out there with your gun and your

28:56

badge and your arrest powers. And even

28:58

in places where it's six months like DC,

29:00

I was actually talking to a a DC 09 officer

29:03

this morning who was lamenting exactly

29:05

this. He said, it's like a joke. You

29:07

know, you never get refreshers The

29:09

mandatory refresher training is

29:12

brief. It's usually bunch of power points,

29:14

you 09 on your gun at the shooting

29:16

range, and you're good to go again. And it's not

29:18

the military has an adage. You fight how

29:20

you train, meaning that if you haven't

29:23

trained over and over and over for

29:25

09, you're not gonna be prepared. I think

29:27

the same is true for policing. The

29:30

trouble is it's really expensive and

29:32

hard to train people really

29:34

well. Right? Yep. It would take several

29:36

years. You have to do lots and lots of role

29:39

play and scenario based training. If

29:41

you want people to really internalize better

29:44

responses to things. And

29:46

it's not something that

29:48

Americans tend to want to spend money on, especially

29:51

right now. You know, that there's a lot of, oh,

29:53

training that's not gonna do any good, so then it

29:55

becomes kind of a a vicious circle. The

29:57

recruiting piece is also a vicious

30:00

circle. If you go on YouTube and

30:02

you Google police recruiting videos, the

30:05

majority of what you're going to find out there

30:07

is going to be police departments that recruit

30:09

with videos that involve people

30:12

jumping out of helicopters and smashing

30:14

doors down and tackling 09 suspects.

30:17

Well, if that's your message to the world, you're

30:19

gonna recruit people who wanna go tackle fleeing

30:21

suspects and smash doors in and that

30:23

becomes kind of self fulfilling if you're recruiting

30:26

and saying, This is what being a police officer involves.

30:28

It involves a lot of force.

30:30

It involves a lot of physical activity, a

30:33

military vision of Illing. The

30:35

people who are attracted to that 09 are exactly

30:37

the wrong people for Illing. Whereas

30:39

if you present policing as a as a service

30:41

profession, you know, as a Illing profession,

30:44

you attract a different kind of 09, but

30:46

right now we're at a moment when police

30:49

departments all over the country are having

30:51

a terribly difficult time recruiting anybody

30:54

just keeping their numbers up, just replacing

30:56

people who leave and retire. Because

30:58

right now, people think, oh, boy,

31:00

who would want to be a police officer 09

31:03

you don't wanna do it because you think why would I wanna

31:05

join this violent militaristic organization

31:07

that hurts 09? Or you think

31:10

Well, I think I could be a good police officer, but

31:12

everybody hates police

31:13

officers. Why would I wanna go do something where everybody's

31:15

gonna hate me? I lived near

31:18

New Orleans and I've been there quite a bit recently

31:20

and it's I don't know how indicative this is of

31:22

other cities around the country, but they've had a massive

31:25

problem with simply not having enough

31:27

comps. People are calling nine eleven,

31:30

and they're saying, sorry, nobody can respond.

31:32

I mean, it's a pretty dire situation.

31:35

Yeah. Although, the one

31:37

thing I would challenge there,

31:39

going back to what I said about seventy five or eighty

31:41

percent of what police officers do is nothing to do with

31:43

crime. Most nine eleven calls

31:45

do not require an armed, uniformed

31:48

agent to the state to show up at the door.

31:50

And very often, we get

31:53

into these conversations, oh, crime is up. We need

31:55

more police officers or too many nine and

31:57

one calls are coming. We need more police officers.

32:00

It's not actually particularly clear to me that

32:02

we need more police officers. Maybe

32:04

we need fewer police officers trained

32:07

09, doing different things. And more

32:10

people who are not armed police officers,

32:12

who are trained 09, who can respond

32:14

to

32:15

many, not all, but to many of

32:17

the kinds of calls that come in.

32:20

09 just witnessed the killing of 09

32:22

Nichols down in Memphis. Yeah.

32:24

I'm not even sure where to

32:26

start, to be honest. So I guess I'll just

32:28

ask How did you process what

32:30

happened there? Yeah. Honestly,

32:33

I didn't watch those videos. It just

32:36

felt so voyeuristic to watch the videos.

32:38

Like, it's like a snuff film. And I do think

32:41

that's become a little bit of an issue in this

32:43

country that there's sort of ritualistic watching

32:46

of these videos. And and and it's very difficult

32:48

because on the one hand, you can't turn

32:50

away from these things because we want to

32:52

change them. But on the other hand, if

32:54

we sort of start, you know,

32:58

kind of wallowing in these depictions of

33:00

pain, particularly 09 pain, I

33:02

think that that has some problems too. Right?

33:04

It's really hard. It feels sort of

33:07

morally wrong both ways. It feels morally

33:09

wrong not to watch it. It also feels morally Illing

33:11

to watch it. The 09 Nichols

33:13

Illing. I think there's another

33:16

piece of this. What? Two other

33:18

09 of this that I would pull out. One

33:21

is that people have lots of, like, well, how you

33:23

know, these were black officers. Why would they do this

33:25

thing? You know, police culture is very powerful.

33:28

And police of whatever race,

33:30

gender, etcetera, very often

33:33

their identities police can start feeling

33:35

more powerful to them than their identity, what's

33:38

racial or ethnic or religious or gender,

33:40

whatever it might be. Yeah. And the

33:42

studies on diversification of police

33:44

departments, They do suggest

33:46

that police departments that mirror the populations

33:49

more racially etcetera have higher

33:51

degrees of public satisfaction but they

33:53

do not suggest that they have lower

33:55

levels of lethal force necessarily. And

33:58

think part of the reason for that that

34:00

09 forget that it's not just about

34:03

racism. There's also a pretty heavy dollop

34:05

of classism in there -- Mhmm. -- of,

34:07

hey, we middle class people regardless

34:09

of race, 09 are these people who we've

34:11

discounted as people. They're they're poor. They're quote

34:14

unquote trash. And that dynamic is

34:16

powerful in many police departments. It's

34:18

one piece of it. The other

34:20

09, though, which has nothing to do with race

34:23

as such, goes back to what I said

34:25

earlier about police getting cynical

34:27

and they spend all day every day, 09

34:29

the worst of people, they much

34:32

like many in the communities in which

34:34

they operate, they're often severely

34:36

traumatized. The rates of

34:38

PTSD 09 undiagnosed

34:41

among cops are extraordinarily 09. More

34:43

cops die by suicide every

34:45

year than of every other cause combined.

34:48

And the research is crystal clear,

34:51

not just for police, but across every

34:53

occupation, Traumatized 09

34:56

often lash out in really terrible ways.

34:58

You know, they they beat up their wife for their

35:01

kid. They drive too fast. They

35:03

pick fights at bars. And I think that

35:05

that's a piece of this too. I mean, I don't know enough

35:07

about these particular officers, but

35:10

I do think that unacknowledged

35:13

trauma can make people

35:15

cruel. It can make people lash out.

35:17

You know, a lot of people are learning about

35:20

this elite unit, whatever the hell

35:22

that means in the dentist 09.

35:24

They they called it the Scorpion unit. Yeah.

35:26

This is the unit that was involved. And then Nichols

35:29

Illing, and there are lots of comparable units

35:31

like this across the country, you know, plainclothes, cops

35:33

and unmarked cars using very aggressive

35:35

tactics. What do you make of these types of units?

35:38

Are they are they dangerous by design?

35:40

Is there any evidence that they work 09 if

35:42

the tactics or a little dicey?

35:46

You know, depends what you mean by work. Right?

35:49

Reduce crime. I mean,

35:51

in a very temporary way, yes,

35:53

they can. If by work, we mean,

35:55

have you arrested a lot of people and temporarily

35:58

reduced like gun? Usually, they're targeting things gun

36:00

crime. Yeah. But in a sort of longer

36:02

term way, usually what tends to happen is

36:04

that the people who are participating in gun

36:06

crime just move to a different neighborhood you know,

36:09

and they you've got these units kinda chasing

36:11

people around the city, but also

36:13

in the longer term, I think they you

36:15

know, again, not always. And I I different

36:17

police departments structure units like

36:19

this, different ways from one another. But

36:21

what they can end up doing when they go bad

36:24

is they actually engender so much

36:26

community hostility 09

36:29

for every guy who they stop

36:31

and frisk who's got illegal weapons,

36:33

who they arrest, they're stopping a

36:35

hundred people who are just going about their

36:37

business. And, okay,

36:39

good news. You got one possibly

36:42

dangerous guy off the street and you've got a hundred people

36:44

who don't trust you anymore and who dislike

36:46

you and who are now less likely to

36:49

tell you anything and less likely to help you

36:51

solve any crimes or prevent any crimes.

36:53

And one of the many other dirty little

36:55

secrets of policing is that 09

36:58

aren't very good at preventing or solving

37:00

most crimes. Yeah. The homicide clearance

37:02

rates in many cities hover somewhere between

37:05

seventy five percent and twenty five

37:07

percent depending on the place. Lots

37:09

and lots of homicides go unsolved, burglaries,

37:12

card Illing, even more likely to go unsolved,

37:15

unless the perpetrator is sort of running away

37:17

as the police get on the scene, or someone

37:19

known to the victim. It can be

37:21

extraordinarily hard for police to do anything,

37:23

and preventing crime has also

37:26

just been tremendously difficult and

37:28

made more so by community mistrust.

37:31

If community members are scared of

37:33

you and don't like you, they're not gonna

37:35

go to you and say, hey, I'm really worried about kid

37:37

downstairs. I saw him boasting

37:39

to his friends about how many guns and card Illing

37:41

said, you know, you're not gonna say that to somebody who

37:44

you don't trust. And needless to

37:46

say, 09 if you trust the

37:48

police, if you think that

37:50

the American penal system and criminal

37:52

justice system writ large, is going to

37:54

mishandle Illing, and it Illing.

37:57

criminal justice system actually makes

37:59

the people who have contact with it more

38:01

likely to commit new crimes rather than less

38:03

likely Even if you like the police,

38:05

you may be very wary of turning somebody

38:07

over into that system, which may make things worse.

38:20

After one last short break, I'll ask

38:22

Rosa what she thinks about the movement

38:24

to defund or even abolish the

38:27

police.

38:53

We've been sort of circling around some

38:55

of the arguments about Illing

38:57

or or defunding the police. There

38:59

are caricature versions of these

39:01

arguments, and there are more nuanced

39:03

versions of them. And I I wanna try to engage

39:06

with the more nuanced versions of them, you know.

39:08

Mhmm. And not sure where you stand on any

39:10

of this, but I'll I'll start by just kinda

39:12

laying my cards on the table. I mean, my

39:15

main objection to a lot

39:17

of these sorts of arguments is that I

39:19

09 do think we need to professionalize

39:22

the police. Yeah. That is a phrase coin by

39:24

others, not me.

39:24

Different police, not necessarily no police.

39:27

Yeah. Right? Because nothing else 09 like the right

39:29

direction to go. But again, 09

39:31

importantly, that would require more, not

39:33

less funding. Yes. And for lots of reasons,

39:36

people aren't really pumped about Illing more

39:38

money. To cops who 09

39:40

continue to see on their screens brutalizing

39:42

people. Yeah, I think

39:44

to me the issue comes down to sort of

39:46

defund I'm not an abolitionist.

39:49

I think we're always going to need some

39:51

people who can use coercion

39:53

on behalf of the state, but

39:55

I I'm sympathetic to

39:57

underlying logic of the defund

40:00

movement, but I think there's sort of a short term and

40:02

there's a long term. Long term, when

40:04

you think about, well, what What would

40:06

we like community safety to look

40:08

like in in fifty years say?

40:10

I would like there to be fewer police Illing

40:13

fewer things. I would like us to have

40:15

fewer police who are reserved for the really

40:17

serious violent situations where nothing

40:19

else is gonna work. And I would like us

40:21

to have fundraes of wonderful

40:23

social workers and teachers and

40:25

doctors and you name it who really

40:27

are flooding neighborhoods where there's a lot of

40:29

09. And who are responding to that stuff

40:32

that right now comes to cops, that

40:34

doesn't involve crimes. You know, I'd like to

40:36

see that, but we don't have that

40:38

right now. And we're not going to get to it next

40:40

year or in two years or in three years,

40:43

maybe we could start getting close to it in a decade,

40:45

probably not for a generation. Because

40:48

if we want those wonderful social workers

40:50

to go, well, we're gonna have

40:52

to train 09, we're gonna have

40:54

to recruit people, we're gonna have to hey, 09,

40:57

it's gonna be a hard job. They're gonna

40:59

need a lot of training. They don't exist

41:01

right now by and large. People sort of blindly

41:04

talk about what couldn't we send a social worker.

41:06

Your average social worker is doing

41:08

therapy or they're a school counselor, they're

41:10

not prepared to go into high crime

41:12

neighborhood at two in the Illing. Where drunk

41:15

people are fighting with each other. We just don't

41:17

have them right now. And we

41:19

need to be thinking now in

41:21

every city in the country, well,

41:24

if here's where we wanna be in in fifty years,

41:26

if we want to have a really different allocation

41:28

of public funds and etcetera, etcetera,

41:31

like, what do we do today to make

41:33

it more like that we're there in fifty years? And then what do

41:35

we do next year and the year after that? And it's

41:37

gonna be 09 if

41:39

the political will exist to do it, it's gonna

41:41

be a long long process and

41:43

there are gonna be mistakes and one of those social

41:46

workers is gonna get killed and everybody's gonna start

41:48

saying, oh, see what a terrible mistake you

41:50

made. Yeah. You know, and I would be Illing,

41:53

terrible things do happen. That doesn't mean the whole

41:55

idea is bad idea. And we we do this

41:57

all the time. We let the one bad thing

41:59

sour us on something. I mean, that's

42:01

exactly what police do. Right? They say, well,

42:04

happened in this one instance, it must happen all the

42:06

time 09 when it

42:06

doesn't. Right. So that's kinda where I come down.

42:09

And and this is the thing I would say in defense.

42:11

I 09, the fact that cops spend so

42:13

much of their time on nonviolent

42:16

crimes and minor drug offenses

42:18

and these sorts of things is such

42:21

a problem. They should spend much

42:23

more time screening, much more time Illing

42:25

training on deescalation and how to

42:27

communicate more effectively. That's part of a professionalization

42:29

I'm talking about. But also, they should be focused more

42:31

on actual violent crimes because so much of the

42:33

other stuff amounts to harassment

42:36

and extortion and a waste of time and

42:38

09. And I don't have any idea how

42:40

many violent police interactions involve

42:43

people with disabilities or mental health issues.

42:45

Yeah. That never would have happened if those

42:47

people had gotten the help they needed, which

42:50

is why the call for better social services

42:52

and more funding for social services are

42:54

absolutely 09.

42:56

I mean, we Americans are short

42:58

term thinkers. We don't have a lot of patience,

43:00

and that's I think one of our national

43:03

characteristics it's always tripping us up.

43:05

Yeah. This is not gonna get better

43:07

in couple years, you know, much less

43:09

a couple months as some cities kind of go, oh,

43:11

we tried that didn't work. Okay. Let's onto something

43:14

else. This is Illing to take a really

43:16

long time and we're going to have to be

43:18

willing to experiment. We're going to have to be willing to

43:20

have failures and learn from them.

43:22

And I don't know that the American

43:25

public much less the people who we elect

43:27

to represent us at various levels have the

43:29

stomach for that kind of longer

43:31

term thinking, but it is absolutely

43:34

the only thing that's going to get us out of this

43:36

situation that we're in right now.

43:38

09 ran an old vox conversations episode

43:41

earlier this week with my

43:43

terrific colleague, Fabiola 09.

43:46

And choosing dialogue with the police

43:48

abolitionist, whose name was Derica Purnell,

43:51

who made a lot of genuinely

43:54

interesting points, but she also said something

43:57

that crystallized a kind

43:59

of first principle objection for 09. I'm curious

44:01

what you Illing. And she'd said that the goal was ultimately

44:04

to eradicate violence

44:06

from society. And for me,

44:08

there will always be violence in 09,

44:10

and we will need police to deal with it. And

44:12

while I appreciate the call to imagine

44:15

a different world and to reexamine

44:18

our deepest assumptions about our current

44:20

one, I am pretty firm on this

44:22

point as as firm as I can be. And yet,

44:24

at the same time, I'm also a

44:26

white guy who's never felt threatened. By

44:28

the police. Mhmm. And I don't know what that's

44:31

like. And I do think there's a moral obligation

44:33

to take that seriously.

44:36

Yeah. Okay. But I guess I have two

44:38

09. One of which is

44:40

more agreement with her and

44:42

the other of which is more disagreement. The

44:44

more disagreement piece is that

44:46

people are always saying, well, we should listen to

44:49

people in the affected communities, meaning people

44:51

of color, in particular, but

44:53

they're not homogeneous either. You know?

44:55

And in fact, a majority of black

44:57

Americans and in particular, a majority

45:00

of black Americans who live in high crime neighborhoods

45:02

They do not want fewer police officers.

45:04

Right. They want different better policing,

45:07

but they don't want fewer. But as I

45:09

said, they're short term and they're long term, and wouldn't

45:11

it be nice to get to no violence,

45:13

but there's pretty long in the meantime if we

45:15

ever get there. You know, maybe we can kind of get

45:17

ever closer, but I agree with you. I don't think we're ever

45:20

gonna get there. I agree with her that I don't

45:22

think that means we shouldn't try. You know, of course,

45:24

we should be trying. We should be trying to eradicate

45:26

violence with the recognition, the awareness

45:28

all the time. We probably won't succeed,

45:31

but that maybe we can reduce it and reduce it

45:33

and reduce it and reduce it to a level that is

45:35

less crippling societally. 09 I

45:37

think that as long as there is violence,

45:39

we can't also ignore the fact that

45:41

it is poor people of color who

45:43

are also the victims. Of

45:46

the vast majority of violent crimes

45:48

in this 09. And it's not

45:50

good enough to sort of say to them

45:52

good news, everybody. We've decided that the real

45:54

problem is police, so we're not gonna be in police

45:56

anymore. Well, believing

45:58

that structural racism exists You

46:01

can believe that and still believe that there

46:03

are people right this minute who if

46:05

there are no police Illing commit more crimes and will

46:07

hurt more people. And that doesn't 09, were there

46:09

no structural any qualities, etcetera? Would they

46:11

have turned out that way? Maybe not, you know?

46:13

But we're where we are right now.

46:16

And we can't just wish it away.

46:18

Yeah. I do think that the

46:20

abolitionist terminology and the

46:23

defund terminology 09 not done any

46:25

favors for those movements because I

46:27

I think that when you frame it 09,

46:29

when you frame it as one that is more inclusive

46:32

to invite 09 officers to actually be

46:34

part of the conversation. You end up with

46:36

a much better, more constructive conversation

46:38

when you frame it as, hey, we all

46:40

share a goal. Of making

46:42

the society less violent

46:45

and less racist, etcetera. That's our

46:47

goal. We all share that goal. We

46:49

all think that it doesn't really make sense

46:51

for police to be mediating arguments

46:54

between a teenage kid and their parent.

46:56

Somebody with a gun there may make things worse

46:58

rather than better. 09 all can agree

47:00

on that. And now let's talk nitty gritty.

47:02

Let's talk how do we

47:04

move forward in a way that 09

47:07

officers of tests that they generally do

47:09

not wanna be Illing, don't feel well equipped

47:12

for desperately want some other

47:14

city agency to step in and do instead

47:16

of them. They're actually gonna be, in

47:18

many cases, allies. We run a program

47:20

here at Georgetown to fellowship

47:22

program with Young DC police officers,

47:24

and we had a session Last 09, we had

47:26

workshop where this was exactly the issue

47:29

and the officers were expressing incredible

47:31

frustration about the fact that they

47:34

encounter over and over and over again situations

47:36

where they want to refer people to

47:38

social services, you know, to counseling,

47:41

to safe places if they're victims of domestic

47:43

violence, whatever it may 09. And

47:45

they're like, we call the Department of Behavioral Health,

47:47

and nobody answers the phone ever.

47:50

Yeah. So I actually think that you start asking

47:52

police to be part of that conversation, they

47:54

become some of the biggest advocates for

47:57

funding all those other things.

48:00

Earlier, you talked about some of the research

48:02

on police training, and you talked about

48:04

the importance of instilling

48:06

cops with a sense of self

48:08

confidence, so they're not

48:11

acting purely or primarily

48:13

out of fear. And I think we can

48:15

say that if that's the goal

48:17

of police training, that it's not

48:20

working right now. Many

48:22

cops report that they're afraid

48:24

of getting into violent interactions or

48:27

they're worried about whether every person they encounter

48:29

on the 09 is armed especially

48:32

in these high profile instances of

48:34

police violence. We constantly

48:36

hear that comps are afraid. Is

48:39

there something that we can do in

48:41

training to make cops less

48:43

afraid to give them more confidence so

48:46

that they're not acting

48:47

primarily? 09 of fear? Yeah.

48:50

I mean, I think in an ideal world, we would

48:52

have older cops for one thing. Right

48:54

now, there's this recruiting crisis means that

48:56

09 departments can't be very picky. But,

48:58

you know, the United Nations, this is decade

49:01

or more ago, raised the minimum

49:03

age for UN peacekeeping soldiers to

49:05

twenty five. And that's

49:07

because they found that the vast

49:10

majority of situations that involved

49:12

abuse of behavior by soldiers involved very

49:14

young soldiers. And that you raise the

49:16

age of twenty five people start aging out of

49:18

being jerks, you know, they really do.

49:20

And that if you can restrict it to somewhat older

49:23

soldiers that you're gonna have far fewer problems.

49:25

Not none, but fewer. You know, in an ideal

49:27

world, I think we would see being a police officer or

49:29

something that is not your first job out of high school.

49:32

You know, something that you have to get

49:34

to after lived experience

49:36

and lots and lots of training, recruiting

49:38

people for their problem solving

49:41

skills, for their critical thinking, for their

49:43

communication skills, and every police chief in

49:45

the country will tell you that that's what they want. 09

49:47

say, this is what we need. This is actually

49:49

not like the military where you're gonna

49:52

be out there with fifty other people and a command

49:54

structure, and somebody can tell you what to do.

49:56

Our police officers are out there all by themselves.

49:59

And yes, they can call for their sergeant or they

50:01

can call for backup. But there's probably

50:03

gonna be a significant period of time in

50:05

any situation where it's gonna be one or

50:07

two officers alone having to decide

50:10

how to handle a situation. And that

50:12

really means that you want people who

50:14

have really good judgment are really good communicators,

50:16

etcetera, because they're gonna have to

50:18

make decisions for themselves, which in turn, of

50:20

course, means that you need not only to recruit

50:23

people with those skills and characteristics

50:25

in mind, but have training

50:28

that really reinforces those. I mean, I had

50:30

a conversation with a senior official

50:32

in the 09 Police Department who

50:34

was saying that he felt like one of

50:36

the things a lot of the new recruits at the police

50:39

academy lacked It wasn't just they didn't

50:41

have deescalation skills. They just did not have to talk

50:43

to 09. And he attributed little bit to

50:45

generational stuff where people have got their heads in

50:47

their phones. They don't have the face to face

50:49

interactions. And he was saying

50:51

they're really trying to think of ways to literally

50:54

force those recruits to go talk

50:56

to 09. Like, your assignment for the

50:58

next two hours is to have conversations with

51:01

ten 09, to walk around the street

51:03

-- Yeah. -- you know, have conversations with people.

51:05

Just say hi, and to just

51:08

practice that. And it sounds so dumb. Right? sounds

51:10

like, well, everybody knows how to talk. Right?

51:12

And it's sort of an undervalued skill, but

51:14

tremendous amount of policing is

51:16

learning how to say, okay,

51:18

wow, boy, you know, I can see you're pretty upset,

51:21

09 upset too. Well, okay, well, this you know, what's going on

51:23

09. Okay. Well, maybe we can solve this problem.

51:25

Howard Bauchner: We're dealing with an

51:27

impossibly complicated dynamic and lots

51:30

of people are justified in

51:32

their anger and there

51:34

just isn't a way out of this and

51:36

it's partly because there is lots of anger

51:38

to go around, justifiable anger to go around.

51:41

That we can't move forward. Yeah. And

51:43

it's just it's kind of

51:44

disputing. You know, one of the things I also

51:46

hear a lot of my friends who are still

51:48

police officers saying is

51:50

this frustration that police

51:53

departments like everybody else in the universe, they

51:55

value what they can measure, and you can

51:57

measure things like arrest. It's

51:59

very hard to measure situations

52:01

that were diffused that could have gone wrong. You

52:04

know, it's the dog that doesn't bark in the night. Right?

52:06

Right. And so they say, you

52:08

go on YouTube and it's nothing but these terrible

52:10

videos of police doing awful things.

52:12

And, you know, they they sort of 09. They're

52:15

often sort of like, why aren't there videos Please

52:17

doing good things because we do

52:19

good things all the time. And they're

52:21

not wrong, but -- Yeah.

52:23

-- nobody bothers to put on YouTube, or

52:25

is it even recording in the first place? You

52:27

know, the interaction that goes really well, the

52:30

interaction that's pleasant, or the interaction where

52:32

the police off or successfully diffuses a

52:34

really tense situation and everybody

52:36

goes away and it's 09. And

52:38

it's not even forget the general public

52:40

09 those videos. Right? 09

52:43

express frustration that their sergeants

52:45

don't see it either and nobody is

52:48

tracking or knows how to track who

52:50

deescalated the most situations. And

52:53

it's not that the cops don't know. Right?

52:55

They absolutely know. Institutions

52:58

09

52:58

It's not rewarded in part because it's hard

53:01

to quantify, and that's part of the dilemma.

53:03

Well, in the interest of ending this on a more constructive,

53:06

optimistic note, you mentioned

53:08

the program that you you helped run

53:10

at Georgetown for young cops in

53:12

09. This is program where you talk about

53:15

race and violence and the role of policing and

53:17

all that stuff. Do you feel like

53:19

that work there is actually making a difference

53:21

and giving you more

53:22

hope? I do. I really

53:25

do. And, yeah, that's the thing that really

53:27

gives me hope. We're now

53:29

in our fourth cohort of fellows, so

53:31

all told I think we've maybe We've

53:33

had about seventy officers go through this

53:36

and they're great

53:39

and they're super thoughtful They're

53:41

super self aware. They really want to grapple

53:43

with all of these issues. And I

53:45

feel like that's part of what we hope will be generational

53:48

change in 09, at least in this 09. That

53:51

those young officers will rise in

53:53

the ranks, and they Illing,

53:55

we hope, you know, 09 new ideas

53:57

throughout the department, and we really emphasize

53:59

a big part of program is talking to the memo. What

54:02

does it mean to be a change agent within an organization?

54:04

How do you do that when you're in a rigid hierarchical

54:07

organization? And I can

54:09

think of multiple examples

54:11

of things that have come out of

54:13

the discussions we've had in those workshops

54:15

or things that have been part of projects that

54:18

our fellows have done that have turned into

54:20

policy for the department, whether it's

54:22

new policies for police interactions

54:24

with adolescents. Or whether

54:26

it's better training on officer

54:29

wellness or whether it's some changes the

54:31

09 academy curriculum. You know, no single

54:33

one of them is remotely trans formative,

54:35

but going back to the kind of harm reduction concept,

54:39

no question in my mind. These

54:41

young officers who've gone through this program

54:45

have done really concrete things

54:47

that have made the department a little

54:49

bit better and it doesn't solve

54:51

racism, it doesn't solve poverty, it doesn't solve

54:53

violence and crime. But it

54:55

makes life a little better for some, you know,

54:57

for at least a few people and it probably saved few

54:59

lives and that's not Chuck Libra.

55:02

Well, I think it's such great work and

55:04

I commend you for doing it and for having

55:07

a a few skins in the game and kinda getting

55:09

your hands little dirty as it were. So

55:12

Rosa Brooks, you are always a source of wisdom

55:14

and insight. Thank you so much for being

55:16

here.

55:16

My pleasure, Sean. Thank you so much for having me.

55:35

Eric 09 is our producer. Patrick

55:37

Boyd engineered this episode. Alex

55:40

Overington wrote our theme music and

55:43

AM Hall is the boss. This

55:47

really is a tough one. This is a very fraught

55:49

issue for lots of understandable reasons.

55:52

I really appreciate the fact not just that

55:54

Rosa has a unique perspective, being a

55:57

law professor and having worked on the streets

55:59

as a cop. She also really

56:01

is trying to be constructive

56:03

here. She runs a program down

56:06

at Georgetown that brings in Young cops

56:08

and helps them think through these issues and

56:11

imagine ways of doing policing differently

56:13

and better. And I commend her for

56:15

that. Let

56:19

us know what you Illing. Drop us a line

56:21

at the gray area at box dot

56:23

com. And if you appreciated this

56:25

episode, share it with your friends on

56:27

all of the socials. It really helps.

56:29

New episodes drop on Mondays and Thursdays.

56:35

Listen and subscribe.