Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, policy makers, and performers,
Speaker 1: to hear their stories. What inspired their creations, what decisions
Speaker 1: change their careers, what relationships influence their work. There are
Speaker 1: thirty four thousand police officers in New York City and
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands more in departments across the country. We
Speaker 1: give the police a lot of responsibility and a lot
Speaker 1: of power. How they use that power, more specifically, how
Speaker 1: they use force is central to the quality of our
Speaker 1: democracy and one of the hottest topics in our society today.
Speaker 1: The deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric
Speaker 1: Garner in New York City, both killed during controversial police encounters,
Speaker 1: led to massive protests across the country and in New
Speaker 1: York City to the apparent retaliity Tory assassination of two
Speaker 1: police officers, Wenjin Lou and Rafael Ramos in late December,
Speaker 1: the New York City Police Union had Patrick Lynch responded
Speaker 1: to the officers deaths with this there's blood on many
Speaker 1: hands tonight. Lynch went on to blame protesters and even
Speaker 1: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio that blood on
Speaker 1: the hands starts on the steps of City Hall in
Speaker 1: the Office of the Mayor. Last week in The New
Speaker 1: York Times, Isabel Wilkerson wrote that the protests across the
Speaker 1: country quote are a response to unprosecuted police brutality, but
Speaker 1: are also a plea for recognition of African Americans humanity unquote.
Speaker 1: How people feel about police and policing maybe as divisive
Speaker 1: now as it has ever been. I wanted to know
Speaker 1: how we came to this point and how we might
Speaker 1: make things better. I started by talking to two people,
Speaker 1: John Eterno and David Kennedy, who have been working on
Speaker 1: policing issues long before the conversation became the current front
Speaker 1: page shouting match. Both have deep street experience. Johnny Turno,
Speaker 1: my first guest, teaches criminal justice at Malloy College. He
Speaker 1: is a retired New York City Police captain and once
Speaker 1: defended stop and frisk, but not how it came to
Speaker 1: be used. Under the Bloomberg administration. After two thousand and
Speaker 1: two through two thousand and eleven, we climb from less
Speaker 1: than a hundred thousand stops to seven hundred thousand stops,
Speaker 1: mostly in minority neighborhoods. And this this is the problem.
Speaker 1: The police became like an army of occupation in these neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: And this is what the Floyd case stands for. Floyd
Speaker 1: is a case where the Center for Constitutional Rights sued
Speaker 1: the city regarding their stop behaviors. Who is Floyd and
Speaker 1: what happened in the case, Well, these are minority individuals
Speaker 1: who are stopped illegally by the police. One was a
Speaker 1: medical student um and Judge Sinlan in the case essentially
Speaker 1: finds that the police department, through its policy, was the
Speaker 1: facto racist in what it was doing. Do you think
Speaker 1: the New York City Police Department is the factor racist?
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think officers individual or do you
Speaker 1: think that the policies can result in racists? I think
Speaker 1: the policy of stopping first did result in an and
Speaker 1: in the fact of racist pattern that Judge Sinlan talks about.
Speaker 1: And she's very clear in her finding. The officers uh
Speaker 1: And again I talked to many officers, most almost all
Speaker 1: all officers are very high upstanding, honest working citizens doing
Speaker 1: a very very tough job. But what officers swear an
Speaker 1: oath to They don't swear an oath to bring down crime.
Speaker 1: They swear an oath to protect the Constitution of the
Speaker 1: United States, and that means that you have to allow
Speaker 1: free speech. You have to allow people the maximum freedom
Speaker 1: that you can within the law. So you have to
Speaker 1: enforce the law while at the same time following law.
Speaker 1: And in this case, would stop and frisk officers went
Speaker 1: too far? Why because they're under these heavy quotas. Rookie
Speaker 1: officers are sent out there told we want you to
Speaker 1: do ten stop in first today, so they would go
Speaker 1: out then they stopped like ten people that they saw.
Speaker 1: Officers were doing this because of all of these pressures,
Speaker 1: according to Judge Finlin, and I would agree with that.
Speaker 1: And because of all these pressures, they're stopping innocent, mostly
Speaker 1: minority youth. They're finding very few violations of the law.
Speaker 1: They're finding very few guns, which was what Commissioner Kelly
Speaker 1: at the time stated was the reason why they were
Speaker 1: doing all this, but they weren't getting much. It wasn't
Speaker 1: really an effective thing. Now, with Commissioner Bratton back, we've
Speaker 1: gone down to less than a hundred thousand stops, and
Speaker 1: they're more effective stops. They're finding guns more often than
Speaker 1: they did under Commissioner Kelly. And I would also say
Speaker 1: that under Commissioner Kelly, crime was also dropping, So that's
Speaker 1: that's a good thing. But with crime dropping, they're or
Speaker 1: less criminal suspects on the street, or there should be
Speaker 1: less criminal suspects. So how do you go from a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand stops or legally doing a hundred thousand stops,
Speaker 1: or to doing seven hundred thousand stops if there are
Speaker 1: less criminal suspects? The law requires officers to have something
Speaker 1: called reasonable suspicion. Reasonable suspicion is a level of proof
Speaker 1: that people needed, like you have to be kind sure
Speaker 1: that the person is is doing something wrong. So you
Speaker 1: can't just, like on a mere hunt, say I'm gonna
Speaker 1: stop that guy. That's illegal. It's unconstitutional. You need to
Speaker 1: have reasonable suspicion to legally stop someone. And this court
Speaker 1: found that the stops being made by the New York
Speaker 1: City Police Department war unconstitutional according to the fourth and
Speaker 1: fourteenth And the result of that ruin well, there's frisking.
Speaker 1: Well that's a good question because Commissioner Kelly was continually
Speaker 1: saying I'm not changing the policy even after this was rendered.
Speaker 1: And you have to understand though that during the time
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg. It's kind of like a a steam being
Speaker 1: put in a bottle. There's all the steam and minority
Speaker 1: communities and building and building and building, and then the
Speaker 1: Blasio comes in and he kind of pops the cork
Speaker 1: and all the steams coming out and people are all.
Speaker 1: You know, people didn't complain under Kelly and Bloomberg, because
Speaker 1: what was the point. I think people have a right
Speaker 1: to say what they're as long as it's peaceful. You
Speaker 1: know that, And I'm fine with that. I'm even fine
Speaker 1: with the police officers themselves. Um, as long as it's
Speaker 1: peaceful and it's in the spirit said that the Blasio
Speaker 1: had blood in his hands. Well, what was your reaction
Speaker 1: when you heard them? Um? There is a rhetoric in
Speaker 1: in in this game. Sometimes the rhetoric goes a bit
Speaker 1: too far, and uh, I think they've never seen it.
Speaker 1: It's a bit far. But I do think Pat lynch
Speaker 1: Is is more much more concerned more about how his
Speaker 1: officers are perceived. He wants that respect that officers deserve,
Speaker 1: and I agree with that. Uh, these officers are out
Speaker 1: there doing a tough job and he's right, they need
Speaker 1: to be respected. And he felt a mad to Blasio
Speaker 1: disrespected them. Did he go a bit far with his rhetoric. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know, things have gotten out of hand and we
Speaker 1: need somebody to, you know, bring the level back down.
Speaker 1: Minority communities are upset because of the unconstitutional stops that
Speaker 1: were done over years and years. We're not talking about
Speaker 1: it a day or or a few unconstitutional stops. We're
Speaker 1: talking about wholesale stops done in um mostly minority neighborhoods
Speaker 1: that have been done. Seven stops in one year is
Speaker 1: to me is incredulous. Uh, And it seems like a
Speaker 1: waste of money too. Most people I know look at
Speaker 1: the police. They realize it's a tough job. They realized
Speaker 1: they're not paid very much money. They see what happened
Speaker 1: with Eric Garner, and they think, why the finest police
Speaker 1: department in the world has four guys that can't bring
Speaker 1: down some guy that's selling lucy cigarettes on the ground.
Speaker 1: Why can't they bring him down without killing him? Well,
Speaker 1: when you saw the Eric Garner footage, what did the
Speaker 1: first thing you thought? Well, first, it's a lot more complicated.
Speaker 1: If somebody doesn't want to be handcuffed, that's whoever it is.
Speaker 1: It's very difficult to handcuff them. It is. And now
Speaker 1: these officers, these officers. When I saw the film, um,
Speaker 1: I didn't have a problem with the use of force.
Speaker 1: But here's my problem. I hear I can't breathe. I
Speaker 1: can't breathe, and it's very audible on the tape about
Speaker 1: eleven times, and they ignore that Eric Graner is cuffed.
Speaker 1: Now it's over. They haven't coughed and they didn't do anything.
Speaker 1: That's my problem getting him cufed. I understand you have
Speaker 1: to do what you have to do to get him coughed.
Speaker 1: There should have been a shift, that's right, and that
Speaker 1: didn't happen. But didn't happen, you'd have to ask the officers.
Speaker 1: I don't know. There was a sergeant on the scene too,
Speaker 1: I don't know. But what should have happened at the
Speaker 1: end of that is that Eric Ghana Mr Ghanna should
Speaker 1: have immediately immediately without without stop. He should have been
Speaker 1: sat up, and he should have been taken to the
Speaker 1: hospital immediate without any hesitation. When you hear something like
Speaker 1: my I have hard palpitations on my I can't breathe,
Speaker 1: or anything like that, that is the queue for the
Speaker 1: officers to do. Something. So in terms of the use
Speaker 1: of force, I didn't have a problem. Do you find
Speaker 1: that that's the difficulty is for them in an instant
Speaker 1: to shift from being the aggressor and the police officer
Speaker 1: who's trying to incapacitate you and handcuff you too in
Speaker 1: a split sitt of the in turner and then care
Speaker 1: for you and become like a QUEZ I E. M. S.
Speaker 1: Technician and make sure you're okay. That is the difficulty.
Speaker 1: That is one of the most difficult things for a
Speaker 1: police officer to do it. I'm glad you you you
Speaker 1: pointed that out. How hard it is for police officers
Speaker 1: to initially get very aggressive and then switch it off
Speaker 1: and become the helper. That is one of the most
Speaker 1: difficult things that for police officers to do. But on
Speaker 1: the flip side, they should have. That is what being
Speaker 1: a democrat trained to do. That they are and that's
Speaker 1: what being a democratic police officer is all about. And
Speaker 1: and but understand Alec that being a police officer is
Speaker 1: not a clean, easy, simple Yeah it's you. You want
Speaker 1: to say. Remember, I'm from south Shore, Long Island, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm from Massa Pekra, which is the NYPD Rivieria. I'm
Speaker 1: someone that if I didn't end up doing for a
Speaker 1: living what I ended up doing now, there's every chance
Speaker 1: to believe I'd be running down an alley but with
Speaker 1: a gun in my hand of a narcotic squad. All
Speaker 1: the men who are in that job. I'm so different
Speaker 1: than them. Who's to say how I would I acknowledge that.
Speaker 1: All I'm saying is is that people in this city
Speaker 1: believe that when the cops do something wrong, they never
Speaker 1: get punished. And here's the PS. Guess who's gonna pay
Speaker 1: Garner's family in a civil settlement? Well, I agree, how
Speaker 1: much money is spent every year by the city to
Speaker 1: settle cases against the cops? How much it's ridiculous. There's
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars. Yes, and I understand that.
Speaker 1: But let's let's just go back, of course, So let's
Speaker 1: go back to to Pat Lynch. Though for for a
Speaker 1: second he does talk about money. But I think sometimes
Speaker 1: rightfully so, I think that officers deserve um a race,
Speaker 1: and I would I would be out there and I
Speaker 1: would say, yes, they doss ave more money. Their job
Speaker 1: is that tough. But on the flip side, we have
Speaker 1: to be reasonable and responsible with the coffers of the city.
Speaker 1: But the city right now is in very good shape.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not like we're back. I don't care
Speaker 1: if the city was in good shape or bad ship.
Speaker 1: They shouldn't have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars
Speaker 1: settling the cases. Just get a fair wage. What I
Speaker 1: believe is I want to go even further, meaning I
Speaker 1: want there to be less cops and they're better trained.
Speaker 1: I want to sit there and I want to talk
Speaker 1: about the physical requirements, the fitness requirements, the language requirements.
Speaker 1: I want cops to have a starting salary of a
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five thousand dollars a person. But you
Speaker 1: want to know something, They've got four years of college.
Speaker 1: They can pass the physical fitness test like nobody's I mean,
Speaker 1: I want these guys, men and women to be ready.
Speaker 1: Do you think you have that in the police department now? Well,
Speaker 1: being a police officer is a lot more complicated than
Speaker 1: than It's not necessarily just being you can, not necessarily
Speaker 1: being superman. It's it really does require the ability to
Speaker 1: not only fight crime, but also the ability to be understanding,
Speaker 1: the ability to work with communities. Uh So, you're not
Speaker 1: just out there, you know, enforcing the law. You're also
Speaker 1: a community officer. You're an officer, and that would be
Speaker 1: part of the training I'm talking about. They would have
Speaker 1: more of that training as well. Yeah. I don't want
Speaker 1: anybody to be Batman, That's that's one. I want them
Speaker 1: to have capabilities in all aspects. I think we should
Speaker 1: have better cops and we have slightly fewer of them
Speaker 1: and pay them more money, a lot more money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a possibility. The job a very difficult job to get.
Speaker 1: Understand that the city is already down about six thousand
Speaker 1: cops from its high point where they had forty. It's
Speaker 1: a thing. Yes, I do. I think. I think you
Speaker 1: need officers out there, officers is back up or officers
Speaker 1: who can be trained in very specific types of work,
Speaker 1: domestic violence officers, officers who are capable at all different
Speaker 1: types of things. So we're not necessarily looking for, you know, Batman,
Speaker 1: as you say, We're looking for people who are uh educated,
Speaker 1: who are understanding, who are willing to keep the discretion,
Speaker 1: who have that's the key, and I think that discretion
Speaker 1: has been taken away. And I'm glad you said that
Speaker 1: back in my day, there was far more discretion, and
Speaker 1: there were times when you'd stop somebody and you know,
Speaker 1: you'd say to them, have a nice day, and you
Speaker 1: wouldn't give him a summons. But for quite a while
Speaker 1: there officers were stopping people and just giving them something.
Speaker 1: Let me give you a couple of examples. Chess players
Speaker 1: and in wood these guys are just playing, you know,
Speaker 1: the cement board. They're just playing chess in in the
Speaker 1: city and along coome a couple of cops. What do
Speaker 1: they do They write them summons is for being in
Speaker 1: the park without children. You gotta be kidding me. Back
Speaker 1: in my day, a couple of guys playing chest but
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even looked at it. And then they have
Speaker 1: the donut caper in uh in Brooklyn. These are women.
Speaker 1: They're eating donuts in a park, but they don't have
Speaker 1: children with them. Officers run up to them because they
Speaker 1: don't have children. There is a law about this. They
Speaker 1: all get summons is for eating donuts. One of the
Speaker 1: most egregious ones is in Queens where a woman and
Speaker 1: a man, an elderly woman and a man. They're driving
Speaker 1: in their cards. She doesn't have a seatbelt on. She's
Speaker 1: going to get prescription drugs. The officers stopped the car.
Speaker 1: They asked for identification, and the woman says, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I don't have identification. It's it's it's not on me.
Speaker 1: I I don't know. So they order the man her husband, elderly,
Speaker 1: to go get it the houses a few blocks away,
Speaker 1: and meantimes she gets her prescription drugs, comes out the
Speaker 1: right every summons for the no seat belt, using her
Speaker 1: prescription drug bottle as the identification. The man then comes back,
Speaker 1: exhausted on a freezing cold night. I mean it's like
Speaker 1: you know today, it's cold outside. Um, and he gets
Speaker 1: back he was here, I have the identification on. The
Speaker 1: officers say, oh, we don't need it. We already wrote
Speaker 1: the summons. The man subsequently died and had a heart
Speaker 1: attack from his exertion. Well, I was working. If you
Speaker 1: stopped an elderly couple, you know, you might escort them home,
Speaker 1: or you might just say, gee, I'm sorry, just put
Speaker 1: you see about on have a nice day. But officers
Speaker 1: had to reflect these things in their numbers, and at
Speaker 1: the time Pat Lynch, to his credit, said, don't blame
Speaker 1: the beat cop, blame NYPD management. And he took out
Speaker 1: full page ads, which I agreed with it. This was
Speaker 1: certainly a policy developed by the higher ups telling officers
Speaker 1: you're gonna do this, so that discretion that you brought
Speaker 1: up has been lost for years. Where did you grow
Speaker 1: up bayside Queens and anybody in the family in the department?
Speaker 1: Uh No, nobody the first Yeah, how did that come about? Well?
Speaker 1: I needed a job like anyone else, and I took
Speaker 1: the test service tests. I did. I went to Queen's
Speaker 1: College history degree. You got a four year degree from
Speaker 1: Queen's College. I did. He had a four year a
Speaker 1: degree from Queen's College, a really, really good school. And
Speaker 1: you wanted to you decide you want to go to
Speaker 1: the department. Why I did? Well, Like most people, I
Speaker 1: felt a calling. I felt that I wanted to help people.
Speaker 1: I felt it's something that's um very important job where
Speaker 1: I've believed in the Constitution of the United States. I
Speaker 1: believe in democracy, I believe in our rights. I think
Speaker 1: many people have died for us to live the way
Speaker 1: we are. And I'm not just talking about officers. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about soldiers. We're talking about World War Two. My
Speaker 1: uncle was in the Battle of the Bulge, got a
Speaker 1: purple heart there my cousin fort in Vietnam. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I believe that democracy is the best form of government
Speaker 1: that that that's out there now. And I think that
Speaker 1: as a police officer, you are the front line of
Speaker 1: democracy at work. And you attached a lot of pride
Speaker 1: to wearing that uniform, you know, of being a New
Speaker 1: York City police officer. That was a job with a
Speaker 1: lot of integrity. Absolutely, So describe your career. Do you
Speaker 1: were there twenty one years? So you're a patrolman, right,
Speaker 1: I wonder what happened. Yeah, I worked in the tenth Precinct.
Speaker 1: That worked in tenth is On in Chelsea. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of prostitution um in the area. Made made a
Speaker 1: lot of arrests in that and then I got my
Speaker 1: master's degree from New York Institutent Technology, got promoted to
Speaker 1: sergeant and went to South Jamaica and I worked there
Speaker 1: for a while. I also worked in uh the one
Speaker 1: on nine and Flushing Queens. From there, I won a
Speaker 1: scholarship for my PhD and eventually on one of the
Speaker 1: few officers that managed to get the PhD. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I am you got. You got your PhD in Criminal Justice. Yes,
Speaker 1: from New York Tech as well. No, that's from Sunni
Speaker 1: Albany from UH you know, very respected UH criminal Justice school.
Speaker 1: Eventually got promoted to captain, and as captain I did
Speaker 1: my UH I was in Queens, South uh is where
Speaker 1: I worked, and eventually I was brought back into do
Speaker 1: a very large project which was defending stop and frisk
Speaker 1: for the department back in which I did and I
Speaker 1: felt h pretty strongly that the department was doing the
Speaker 1: right thing back then. They were not abusing their authority.
Speaker 1: At the time, we were doing less than a hundred thousand,
Speaker 1: and I was very confident we were doing the right thing.
Speaker 1: After that, I retired and went to Malloy College in
Speaker 1: Rockville Center, Queens, where I'm currently a professor and Associate
Speaker 1: dean of criminal Justice. So you were in the department
Speaker 1: what years from I was in there from three through
Speaker 1: two thousand and four. During the time that you were
Speaker 1: a police officer, did you or anybody you work with
Speaker 1: ever have to put a chokehold on anybody? There were
Speaker 1: times it wasn't illegal. I mean, it's still not illegal.
Speaker 1: It's just something that UM is against the department guidelines. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you do it you can get fired. I've
Speaker 1: seen chokeholds being done. I personally have not done them.
Speaker 1: But when you saw that done, you realize that this
Speaker 1: would had to be done under those circumstances. It did
Speaker 1: absolutely and I have to say at the time when
Speaker 1: I saw the chokeholds done, I have to say that
Speaker 1: they were a pretty successful way of bringing somebody down.
Speaker 1: But there was a danger in doing that, and that's
Speaker 1: why the department eventually said chokeholds uh must not be done.
Speaker 1: You know, listen, I'm going to bring up the worst
Speaker 1: cliche of all because it's nonetheless truer now than ever,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, you always bitch about the cops
Speaker 1: until you need one. My father's brother was in New
Speaker 1: York City police officer years ago in the sixties. My
Speaker 1: sister's former husband's family or police officers. My question for
Speaker 1: you is what makes a good cop today? Um, I
Speaker 1: do want to see educated officers. I think that's something.
Speaker 1: There's a two year requirement. Now there is a two
Speaker 1: year and that that was also something that I helped
Speaker 1: put in while I was on the place, and that's
Speaker 1: been on the book since swim. This is since the nineties.
Speaker 1: So I would like to see a four year degree.
Speaker 1: But I think more importantly what an officer needs is
Speaker 1: an open mind. To be a democratic officer, you have
Speaker 1: to balance the rights of people with the ability to
Speaker 1: fight crime. And there's an interesting book called Tempered zeal And.
Speaker 1: I think that describes exactly what a police officer needs.
Speaker 1: We want somebody that can think, Somebody that gets out
Speaker 1: there and knows when it's enough. Somebody that gets out
Speaker 1: there and says, Okay, I can arrest this guy. But
Speaker 1: maybe I don't have to today. Maybe you know what,
Speaker 1: I don't have to write that summons today. Maybe not
Speaker 1: giving a summons to these people playing chess is a
Speaker 1: good thing. I need somebody out there that can think
Speaker 1: like that the best choice long term, Yeah, what is
Speaker 1: the best choice long term? Not these short term fixes
Speaker 1: that that you know, we're gonna stop somebody riding a
Speaker 1: bicycle in the city. Who's but the officer needs to
Speaker 1: have that discretion, and that officer needs to be a
Speaker 1: thinking officer, not somebody that's just a an automaton, not
Speaker 1: a robot, Not somebody that just says, Okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get out there and and and I'm gonna call the boss.
Speaker 1: Every time you know this, we're gonna write a summons,
Speaker 1: We're gonna make an arrest. And that's what's been going
Speaker 1: on for twelve years. We've got to get away from
Speaker 1: that very very robotic. They've taken the discretion out eactly right.
Speaker 1: We need to get away from that robotic police officers.
Speaker 1: So I want to see a police officers that can think.
Speaker 1: But more importantly, I want to see a police department
Speaker 1: that's more transparent. This, I think is the most important
Speaker 1: thing that the police department can do is open up.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're so great, you know you have
Speaker 1: to say, and you're the greatest, what are you doing
Speaker 1: to address these problems? Show us let us in. Look,
Speaker 1: why can't I anyone visit a CompStat meeting or or
Speaker 1: a walk into the police academy. You know, you should
Speaker 1: be welcome. You may have to get you know first
Speaker 1: or whatever to make sure it's safe, but you're a citizen.
Speaker 1: You should be open up. Data, data, information. All of
Speaker 1: these things are closed the department. The New York Times
Speaker 1: had to sue the police Department to get to get
Speaker 1: data from them. That's unconscionable. This is data that that
Speaker 1: that we the taxpayers are paying for that data should
Speaker 1: be widely available. There's no reason not to. So this
Speaker 1: way we if we have the data, we can do
Speaker 1: these studies to test whether or not a new practice
Speaker 1: might work. Stopping first data. The only reason that data
Speaker 1: came out is because they were sued. But before they
Speaker 1: were sued, that data was only in the police department
Speaker 1: and nobody else could view it. That's wrong. We need
Speaker 1: a police department. We need a different way of paradigm shift,
Speaker 1: a way of thinking where we're transparent. And when I
Speaker 1: tell you that being a police officer is a difficult thing,
Speaker 1: I I mean that it's difficult, but I believe. I
Speaker 1: believe in democratic society. I don't want to live in
Speaker 1: Nazi Germany. I want to live into me. I love
Speaker 1: my country, I love the constitution, I love this place.
Speaker 1: That's why I became a police officer. And I think
Speaker 1: most people become police officers they believe in our country.
Speaker 1: If you're a police officer today, and I mean today,
Speaker 1: like right this moment, in the wake of Ferguson and
Speaker 1: Garner and uh the two police officers that were murdered
Speaker 1: uh here in the city recently, you just look at
Speaker 1: the way things are now, it's it's so hostile, it's
Speaker 1: so tense. What do you think the average police officer
Speaker 1: who's a good man or woman who wants to do
Speaker 1: their job, what do you think that person wants the
Speaker 1: citizens of New York to know about the police department.
Speaker 1: They want to be supported by the by by most citizens.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's that's something that they really crave.
Speaker 1: They're out there defending, putting their lives on the line
Speaker 1: every day, and I think officers, the typical officer, would
Speaker 1: like to feel somewhat appreciated. So the next time you
Speaker 1: see a cop out there, you know, thank them for
Speaker 1: for doing the job that they do, don't just carse them.
Speaker 1: I do think that minority communities right now are up
Speaker 1: in arms, and I think in some cases rightfully so.
Speaker 1: And when we look at the situation in New York
Speaker 1: City where we've seen all of these stopping frisks and
Speaker 1: uh this building up over time, I think part of
Speaker 1: the democratic process is allowing people to peacefully protest. And
Speaker 1: I think that's part of what the police are doing
Speaker 1: right now. They're peacefully probably they're exercising their democratic right
Speaker 1: and it shows you what a great country we live in.
Speaker 1: What do you miss about being a cup I missed
Speaker 1: my friends. Actually that's that's really what I missed. A brotherhood.
Speaker 1: It is, it is, it's a family. I do feel
Speaker 1: it when I go away. I'll go to different places,
Speaker 1: and if I say I'm a police officer there and
Speaker 1: I talked to other police officers, there is a difference.
Speaker 1: People's eyes open up when I testify your talk and
Speaker 1: they realized that I was a cop. It does change things,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad for that brotherhood. Johnny Turno is the
Speaker 1: co author of the crime numbers game Management by Manipulation.
Speaker 1: The protests against the police are in response to recent events,
Speaker 1: but history plays a role to Brian Stevenson heads up
Speaker 1: the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. He thinks history
Speaker 1: and our response to historical events has a lot to
Speaker 1: do with contemporary social problems. We've been acculturated into believing
Speaker 1: that you never back down, you never never missed an absolutely,
Speaker 1: and I think actually, as a country, that's our big
Speaker 1: is problem. All we do is tell people around the
Speaker 1: world how great we are. That's right, and that arrogance
Speaker 1: actually sets us up for the kind of conflicts that
Speaker 1: then follows. I used to get mad at my parents
Speaker 1: for not taking me to town because we lived out
Speaker 1: in the country there's nothing to do. But they didn't
Speaker 1: want me to go with them in town because they
Speaker 1: didn't want me to see them humiliated by any white
Speaker 1: person that they encountered. And it accumulates these injuries, this burden,
Speaker 1: this problem, and we haven't talked about it. And because
Speaker 1: of that, we've now set ourselves up for the conflicts
Speaker 1: and controversies that were still experiencing. Where the police are
Speaker 1: the face of this racial order, and this presumption of
Speaker 1: guilt haunts us and follows all these young people called.
Speaker 1: The Bureau of Justice is now reporting that one in
Speaker 1: three black male babies born in the twenty one century
Speaker 1: is expected to go to jail for a prison that
Speaker 1: wasn't during the twentieth century, wasn't during the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: It became it's only getting worse. That's Brian Stevenson from
Speaker 1: the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. My full conversation
Speaker 1: with him will be out next month. Coming up next,
Speaker 1: I talked with David Kennedy, who brings communities and police
Speaker 1: officers together to talk and the results are surprising. I'm
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. David
Speaker 1: Kennedy teaches criminal justice at John Jay College. He is
Speaker 1: the architect of Operations Ceasefire, a pioneering violent crime reduction
Speaker 1: strategy that continues to be implemented in big cities across
Speaker 1: the country. Kennedy's work, which involves sit downs with police
Speaker 1: and gang leaders, helps address what he considers the larger problem.
Speaker 1: The broken relationship is pretty much with us all the time.
Speaker 1: And that means it's not about stopping frisk, it's not
Speaker 1: about this program, it's not about this policing fad. It's
Speaker 1: much deeper than that. And I've been traveling this geography
Speaker 1: for thirty years now, and I spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time with cops, and I spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: with what we think of as the good people in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood. And I spent a lot of time with
Speaker 1: gang members and drug dealers. And if there's one one
Speaker 1: thing that folks like us on the outside need to understand,
Speaker 1: it's that when we have these moments, you know, white
Speaker 1: folks and the cops, they talk about the incident, they
Speaker 1: talk about the moment black folks talk about history and
Speaker 1: they're historical experience. They're deeply historical anger, their present frustrations
Speaker 1: that will crystallize around the moments. But it's not about
Speaker 1: the moment. It's just that we see it in the moment. No,
Speaker 1: what is it about your own background? I mean, from
Speaker 1: what I read, you were raised in Detroit outside Detroit,
Speaker 1: inside Detroit, And what is it about your background that
Speaker 1: you went on to become And then this is a
Speaker 1: glib uh maybe way of putting it, but to the
Speaker 1: gang whisperer that you became. That's funny because the the
Speaker 1: head of the New Jersey State Police once gave me
Speaker 1: the highest compliment I think I've ever gotten, and he
Speaker 1: said I was a cop whisper So, um, I've been
Speaker 1: really lucky to play both sides of the fence. The
Speaker 1: thing that got my attention thirty years ago, I was
Speaker 1: a budding journalist. I wanted to be John McPhee and
Speaker 1: work for the New York or something like that. And
Speaker 1: the work that I was doing at the time, which
Speaker 1: was staff writing for an academic institution. I was not
Speaker 1: an academic. I wasn't professor, wasn't graduate student. I was
Speaker 1: at Harvard at Harvard, at the Kennedy schoolt Harvard, and
Speaker 1: the assignments I got at that time in the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties got me into the most dangerous neighborhoods in
Speaker 1: the country, and sort of outside actual insurrection or something
Speaker 1: like that, South Central l A. And places like that,
Speaker 1: Washington Heights and the very peak of the crack Heyres
Speaker 1: when you could buy kilos of powder on the street
Speaker 1: without getting out of your car. And the thing that
Speaker 1: you see is an absolute horror show. You see violence
Speaker 1: and despair and fear and hopelessness. And at that time
Speaker 1: you know young men thick on the ground and wheelchairs
Speaker 1: and walkers, and these are gunshot one survivors. The streets
Speaker 1: look like a mash unit. But when you spend time
Speaker 1: there and you really come to understand the experience of
Speaker 1: those communities, what is the worst about those neighborhoods. So
Speaker 1: we talk about schools and healthcare and economic opportunity and
Speaker 1: all those things are really, really, really important, but the grinding,
Speaker 1: day to day insults in the community are violence. Everybody's
Speaker 1: getting arrest, didn't go into prison, which has changed over
Speaker 1: the years. It's gotten much worse since I first set
Speaker 1: foot into the streets. Um, it's an epidemic. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it is an absolutely broken relationship between people in those
Speaker 1: communities and the criminal justice system. There's nothing of the
Speaker 1: moment about that. That's not Eric Garner, it's not this,
Speaker 1: it's not that, it's not Oscar Grant. It is pervasive.
Speaker 1: And then these moments happened when the community and people
Speaker 1: outside the community kind of find their posture and find
Speaker 1: their voice, and those of us who aren't there say, ah,
Speaker 1: something's changed. But the only thing that's changed is the crystallization. Well,
Speaker 1: in the work that you did, the first job you have,
Speaker 1: the first police department that you go to work with
Speaker 1: in an official capacity was who Boston Police Department, So
Speaker 1: you got to work with. But that's where the ceasefire
Speaker 1: thing was. That's and that was your thing you created
Speaker 1: with a whole bunch of others, with a team of people,
Speaker 1: and you can and take us through essentially what was
Speaker 1: but what was going on in Boston then? And what
Speaker 1: was ceasefire? What did you propose? So the most obvious
Speaker 1: worst issue in these neighborhoods is just spectacularly awful levels
Speaker 1: of violence, so that the national homicide rate right now
Speaker 1: is down to about four per hundred thousand. Where we've
Speaker 1: been patting ourselves on the back for twenty years. We're
Speaker 1: sitting in New York City, and especially in New York City,
Speaker 1: but nationally as well, that crime is down and down
Speaker 1: and down and down and down, and it is that's right.
Speaker 1: What we have been dealing with is this long decline
Speaker 1: and the Crack era into the heroin epidemic. Things are
Speaker 1: much better. We all know that for hundred thousand, I
Speaker 1: work in neighborhoods where after the Crack declines and all
Speaker 1: the rest of it, young black men are dying at
Speaker 1: the rate of over five hundred per hundred thousand every
Speaker 1: single year. And you walk those neighborhoods and there are
Speaker 1: you know, rain soaked street shrines to the dead on
Speaker 1: the corner, and r I P. Chalked on the side
Speaker 1: of buildings, and bullet holes in the buildings. And these
Speaker 1: days it's fashionable for the young men to tattoo the
Speaker 1: names of their dead on their forearms and their fingers
Speaker 1: and next year and these are places where there has
Speaker 1: been no peace dividend. Twenty years ago, when Crack had
Speaker 1: not received it, it was even worse. So we set
Speaker 1: up in Boston to try to do something about that,
Speaker 1: and very rapidly, not from you know, econometric research or
Speaker 1: anything fancy, but from spending huge amounts of time with
Speaker 1: street cops, in probation officers and hanging out with gang
Speaker 1: members and just being there. It became immediately apparent that
Speaker 1: what was going on was not what we on the
Speaker 1: outside thought was going on. This was a conversation then
Speaker 1: about drug markets and gun availability and cultures of violence
Speaker 1: and cultures of poverty and the you know, dire impact
Speaker 1: of being exposed to gangster rap and all this kind
Speaker 1: of thing. In fact, what was going on on the
Speaker 1: ground was that there was a very small number of
Speaker 1: drug crews that were shooting each other. And if you
Speaker 1: were in those drug crews and you were on the
Speaker 1: street for ten years, about a seventh of you were
Speaker 1: killed by guns, and statistically everybody left standing had been shot.
Speaker 1: And it also turned out that nobody involved really liked
Speaker 1: it very much. Right, we think the gang members are
Speaker 1: getting rich, and there's a prison industrial complex and they
Speaker 1: need the streets to feed the engine, and there are
Speaker 1: no institutions left except the Black Church, and the community
Speaker 1: doesn't really care about the violence and everything that everybody
Speaker 1: thought about that was wrong. The kids didn't want to die,
Speaker 1: they didn't want to go to prison. The cops were frustrated.
Speaker 1: The community hates the violence, and nobody liked it. And
Speaker 1: so what turned out to be possible, and what we
Speaker 1: did was we created these interventions. We called them forums.
Speaker 1: They get called collins now, but they're actually moments in
Speaker 1: which the cops and social service providers and ministers and
Speaker 1: ex gang members and the street guys all get together
Speaker 1: in a room and everybody who's not a gang member
Speaker 1: and a drug dealer looks at those who are and says,
Speaker 1: this has gonna stop. You know, we know who you are,
Speaker 1: and we know what you're doing. We actually don't think
Speaker 1: you like it. You want to kill you. We don't
Speaker 1: want to kill you. We don't want to lock you
Speaker 1: any for We don't want you to kill each other.
Speaker 1: We especially don't want to go knock on your mother's
Speaker 1: door and tell her that you're dead. So this is
Speaker 1: going to stop. Will help you if you let us?
Speaker 1: There are all these social services there for you. Even
Speaker 1: you don't take the services, your community needs you to
Speaker 1: understand that there is no excuse for shooting each other.
Speaker 1: So your community insists that you stopped that, and rather
Speaker 1: than hiding in the bushes and bringing d e a
Speaker 1: down on your head or stopping everybody that moves in
Speaker 1: your neighborhood, we're just going to tell you today that
Speaker 1: the next body that hits the ground, everybody in the
Speaker 1: crew that did that is going to get our full attention.
Speaker 1: Thanks for your time, You're free to go. In Boston,
Speaker 1: we saw a two thirds reduction in the youth killing
Speaker 1: in about eighteen months in Kansas City. This year they
Speaker 1: got thirty in New Orleans. Over the last two years
Speaker 1: they've gotten in Boston. When you're talking about that period
Speaker 1: that you were doing it then was what years began
Speaker 1: in ninet The average number of homicides in the city
Speaker 1: when we started was about a hundred annually, and in nine,
Speaker 1: which was the last year they did it for real,
Speaker 1: it was down to thirty one. And from I mean
Speaker 1: a lot of what I pulled was from the New
Speaker 1: Yorker profile on you from about five years ago or
Speaker 1: at six years ago. In two thousand nine, you've been
Speaker 1: in North Carolina. Even is this anti Boston, New York,
Speaker 1: Los Angeles? If I missed a few maybe um I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: but but you've been around. Where are they getting it right?
Speaker 1: Where are they getting it better where they were? Is
Speaker 1: there some innovation? Well, they're they're increasingly getting it right.
Speaker 1: So we've been talking about stuff that's twenty years old
Speaker 1: now and what was really pretty radical insurgent stuff just
Speaker 1: isn't anymore. So there's a backbone to this way of
Speaker 1: thinking about doing the work on the ground. The simple
Speaker 1: operational backbone is, when you're talking about the worst stuff,
Speaker 1: not many people do it, killing, killing your wife, standing
Speaker 1: on a corner, selling drugs to pregnant women, you know,
Speaker 1: in in the hardest hit communities, not very many people
Speaker 1: do that. And because that's right, you can deal with
Speaker 1: them in a very different way. You can load services
Speaker 1: on them, you can load community influence on them, you
Speaker 1: can put them on prior notice of their legal risk.
Speaker 1: Those are not radical ideas anymore. What's so interesting about
Speaker 1: that in the present moment is that from the beginning
Speaker 1: it worked much better than anybody could possibly have reasonably bullieved.
Speaker 1: We had two meetings like this in Boston and the
Speaker 1: whole city changed ridiculous. As part of why people couldn't
Speaker 1: believe it was real, just doesn't make I think that
Speaker 1: was going to work. We didn't. We thought we were
Speaker 1: at best. We thought we were up for years of
Speaker 1: heavy lifting and uphill slog at the very best, and
Speaker 1: the streets just flipped. What do you attribute that too?
Speaker 1: So I already said nobody involved in this was what
Speaker 1: anybody on the other side of the fence thought they
Speaker 1: were right. And so that's one answer to each other
Speaker 1: and know each other, and they profoundly misunderstood each other.
Speaker 1: Kid goes a drive by, cops looks at that says, obviously,
Speaker 1: you're an animalistic super predator with no morals and no
Speaker 1: respect for human life. And then you sit down with
Speaker 1: that young man and he says, I didn't want to
Speaker 1: do it. Those guys are beefing with our guys. I
Speaker 1: want to put my guns down, but they'll kill me anyway.
Speaker 1: It seemed easier to do with than not to do it.
Speaker 1: And my own boys will tear me up if I don't,
Speaker 1: and they He looks at the entire Boston Police Department,
Speaker 1: which they think of as able to do anything they want,
Speaker 1: and literally would say they could have stopped me if
Speaker 1: they wanted to. He really believes that, and the only
Speaker 1: reason therefore that they that this happened is because they
Speaker 1: don't care if we kill each other. And both sides
Speaker 1: really believe that both sides are wrong, right, So mediating
Speaker 1: some of that makes a big difference. But here's what
Speaker 1: then turns out to be the lesson of the moment.
Speaker 1: When you think the cops are your race enemy, when
Speaker 1: they have always treated you with disrespect, when the community
Speaker 1: sees them not being able to tell the difference between
Speaker 1: the grandmother and the pastor and the guy on the
Speaker 1: corner because they both get stopped and frisk you know,
Speaker 1: all three of them get treated the same way, when
Speaker 1: nobody you know, has ever gotten any help from the
Speaker 1: police an occupying army. Then when you know who killed
Speaker 1: your friend, when you know that somebody is coming to
Speaker 1: get you, you don't call nine one one, You get
Speaker 1: your friends, you get a gun, you take care of
Speaker 1: it yourself. And then we look at that and the violence,
Speaker 1: you know, the shooting that comes after that in retribution,
Speaker 1: and the shooting that comes after that in retribution, and
Speaker 1: we look at that and we say, this is a
Speaker 1: broken community full of people with bad morals. What we
Speaker 1: ought to be saying is this is a community that
Speaker 1: has never trusted the police, doesn't expect any help from it,
Speaker 1: and rather than working with the criminal justice system, is
Speaker 1: taking care of itself. And when you sit down with
Speaker 1: communities and say, we realize that almost everybody here is
Speaker 1: fundamentally a good person, and even those who are misbehaving
Speaker 1: aren't the monsters we think they are, and we're going
Speaker 1: to treat you with respect, and we're going to begin
Speaker 1: by saying to you, we want to keep you safe,
Speaker 1: we want to keep you alive, we want to keep
Speaker 1: you out of prison, and we want to work with
Speaker 1: you so that we can do that. It turns out
Speaker 1: that those communities are not nearly as broken as we think.
Speaker 1: They don't really hate the police. They just don't want
Speaker 1: the policing they've been getting, and when you give them
Speaker 1: something different, they take it. Do you think that New
Speaker 1: York right now is ripe for that kind of a program,
Speaker 1: for a ceasefire type of program here now, or do
Speaker 1: you think it's unlikely that will happen now in the
Speaker 1: wake of those two killing And I certainly hope it's right,
Speaker 1: because we started already. You have, Yeah, it's happening. The
Speaker 1: first How did that get started? First? It started under
Speaker 1: Bratton and the new Bratton administration, with the full support
Speaker 1: of the mayor, who is looking at this even before
Speaker 1: the election. So it's been a long time coming. But
Speaker 1: the fact is that what the department is calling New
Speaker 1: York ceasefire, their version of this is live in Brooklyn
Speaker 1: North and a couple of associated precincts, And the first
Speaker 1: of these face to face collins was held in Fort
Speaker 1: Green and Brooklyn about a month ago. You describe how
Speaker 1: that went. It was pretty amazing. Part of what's wonderful
Speaker 1: about this is that this is really about people and
Speaker 1: it's about relationships. The way you make this happen is
Speaker 1: you identify the groups, the gangs, the drug cruise. You
Speaker 1: look at the individuals in them. Each group has somebody
Speaker 1: on probation and parole most days, most of the time.
Speaker 1: To make the meeting happen, Probation parole reaches out to them,
Speaker 1: says to them, you're going to be here at this time.
Speaker 1: So they walk in and they see a roam full
Speaker 1: of New York Police Department, the Brooklyn DA's representative, the U. S.
Speaker 1: Attorney's Office, Probation Parole, the Brooklyn North Patrol commander, ex
Speaker 1: Gang member Service, providers cast of thousands, and they hear
Speaker 1: some very very basic stuff. You are the most at
Speaker 1: risk people in this city. Brooklyn right now is the
Speaker 1: most dangerous borough in New York, beyond all the gentrification,
Speaker 1: beyond all that fabled out there. Brown's Ville and East
Speaker 1: New York are parallel universes. Might actually have been the
Speaker 1: Bronx at the time, but Brooklyn and the Bronx are
Speaker 1: where the action is right now in New York City.
Speaker 1: We said earlier homicide risk four per hundred thousand for
Speaker 1: everybody in the country. If you're in the street network,
Speaker 1: it's three thousand per hundred thousand every single year. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just astronomical. You are safer on the ground in
Speaker 1: Afghanistan than being one of these guys. And everybody here
Speaker 1: has organized to keep you alive and out of prison.
Speaker 1: And we're about to sit down and talk to you
Speaker 1: for an hour about how we're going to do that.
Speaker 1: When we're done here, senior police representatives says, my officers
Speaker 1: are going to serve your dinner. We would like you
Speaker 1: to stay, will serve you pizza. We've got Soto, will
Speaker 1: answer any of your questions. Please stay long, and brought
Speaker 1: their mothers. Right, they were about and one of the
Speaker 1: things that happened that night was that one of their
Speaker 1: mothers came with them. Was furious, angry, suspicious doesn't cover it.
Speaker 1: You're you're setting him up, this is this is a scam,
Speaker 1: set him down in the chair. She went off to
Speaker 1: where she was listened to this whole thing. He was
Speaker 1: one of the first guys out the door when they
Speaker 1: were free to go. She brought him back into the room,
Speaker 1: made sure that he talked to everybody, thanked everybody for
Speaker 1: making it happen, and anyway it works. Right, Scholars divide
Speaker 1: some of what we're talking about into formal social control
Speaker 1: and informal social control. And formal social control is the
Speaker 1: cops and the badge and the gun, and the courts
Speaker 1: in prison and probation and parol. Right, all that apparatus
Speaker 1: of the state. We all think that's what controls crime. Right,
Speaker 1: that's the thin blue line. The other scholarly categories informal
Speaker 1: social control, and that's your mother, your your sense of shame,
Speaker 1: your mother or your father, or your girlfriend, the girl
Speaker 1: you want to be your girlfriend eighteen months from now,
Speaker 1: and everything scholarship knows about this says that informal social control.
Speaker 1: Trump's formal social control almost every time, and you and
Speaker 1: your work and your programs have played off on them.
Speaker 1: And we figured out how to teach this to practitioners, right,
Speaker 1: and you can show the theory and the evaluations. None
Speaker 1: of it punches through. Nobody believes it. So the the
Speaker 1: public speaking version of this has been to say to
Speaker 1: a room full of you know, season narcotics guys, when
Speaker 1: you were growing up, who was afraid of the cops?
Speaker 1: And like five to ten percent of the room will
Speaker 1: raise their hand when you were growing up, who's afraid
Speaker 1: of your mother? Right? And everybody in the room raises
Speaker 1: their hand, because we're all afraid of our mothers. And
Speaker 1: you get the mothers, you get the community, you get
Speaker 1: that informal fabric going. That's what controls the violence and
Speaker 1: what our history of policing the community, Jim Crow, the
Speaker 1: Black Code, Separate but Equal, the FBI trying to blackmail
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King, stop and frisk profiling. What all of
Speaker 1: that has done is it has lost us the community,
Speaker 1: and it has lost us that natural community crime control.
Speaker 1: That's what we're dealing with right now, and that's what
Speaker 1: we need to get back. I can't argue with you
Speaker 1: about the informal social control because when I was pulled
Speaker 1: over by the police for riding my bike the wrong
Speaker 1: way on Ffth Avenue, it wasn't until I got home
Speaker 1: and my wife said to me, please don't ride your
Speaker 1: bike the wrong way on the streets anymore, because it's
Speaker 1: only going to embarrass me and you and our family.
Speaker 1: That was really the message that hit home. That's how
Speaker 1: it really works, the informal I'm gonna remember that now.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote you and say, let's say to my wife.
Speaker 1: You know, David Kennedy said, it's informal social control you're
Speaker 1: exercising on me. There is not just one way to
Speaker 1: do policing. There are lots of ways to do policing.
Speaker 1: And part of what's so awful out the shouting that's
Speaker 1: going on around Garner and can't breathe and don't shoot
Speaker 1: and all of that right now, is that the loudest
Speaker 1: and dumbest voices on both sides have thephone the microphone.
Speaker 1: And what a lot of us know is that there
Speaker 1: is a huge middle that respects what everybody's got to say.
Speaker 1: Crimes bad, violence is bad, locking everybody up is bad.
Speaker 1: Stopping every black kid in troubled neighborhoods is bad. We're
Speaker 1: going to deal with all of it, but we're going
Speaker 1: to deal with it in a way that honors the
Speaker 1: need for crime prevention, for public safety, and for not
Speaker 1: expecting being sent to prison to be a normal part
Speaker 1: of growing up. There's a moment that you in the
Speaker 1: New Yorker article where they mentioned I don't know whether
Speaker 1: it was in Boston or Cincinnati, where the the guy
Speaker 1: that was a gang banger gets up in front of
Speaker 1: the guys at the call and they bring the woman
Speaker 1: in the wheelchair. Yeah, Cincinnati, that Wasntcinnati described what that
Speaker 1: what happened there? Were you there? I was there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The guy who did that had been a serial strong
Speaker 1: armed ar robber, so he was an old school guy.
Speaker 1: This is before cracking stuff. He ran around Cincinnati with
Speaker 1: a gun, putting in people's faces and saying, you know
Speaker 1: what time it is. And this man stood up in
Speaker 1: the call in and said, I did very bad things,
Speaker 1: and they haunt me. I will never make up for them.
Speaker 1: They will never leave me. And one of the things
Speaker 1: I did was shoot this woman right here. And he
Speaker 1: had and She was there in her wheelchair which he
Speaker 1: had put her into, paralyzed from the chest down, and
Speaker 1: she pulled her colostomy egg out and showed it to
Speaker 1: all in assembled and said he did this to me.
Speaker 1: And then I sat down with my brothers and said,
Speaker 1: you are not going to go after him. This has
Speaker 1: got to stop. It's really kind of the sermon for
Speaker 1: our time right there's very very little common ground evident
Speaker 1: out there right now, and I believe and pray, but
Speaker 1: I do believe we'll get to it. I think the
Speaker 1: the heat of the moment will ease a little bit
Speaker 1: and sanity will will emerge. The one thing that joins
Speaker 1: everybody in this world right if you're on the corner,
Speaker 1: or if you're in the neighborhood, if you're a cop,
Speaker 1: if you're a prosecutor, the one thing I hear more
Speaker 1: than anything else is everybody is sick of this. Without
Speaker 1: knowing it, we have been backing each other into corners
Speaker 1: that none of us want to be in. And the
Speaker 1: way out of this is really to recognize what is
Speaker 1: nascent out there that everybody involved in this wants to
Speaker 1: be safe. They don't want to hurt anybody, They don't
Speaker 1: want to be hurt. They don't want to get locked up.
Speaker 1: You know, the cops themselves have been saying for forever,
Speaker 1: we can't arrest our way out of this. They know
Speaker 1: that ceasefire and things like that our moments in which
Speaker 1: you can actually construct that common ground, and a lot
Speaker 1: of us think that that is visible. Now you know
Speaker 1: this this city is a good example of it, despite
Speaker 1: the turmoil of the moment. You know, this is a
Speaker 1: city where people said two years ago, we stop stopping
Speaker 1: every black kid in the city, the gutters will be
Speaker 1: running red with blood. And we have stopped stopping everybody
Speaker 1: in the city and on a side continues to go down.
Speaker 1: There are different ways to do this, and they actually
Speaker 1: begin to show the way out of this mess. Who
Speaker 1: do you think is the person that can bring the
Speaker 1: healing to the situation in New York? You had to
Speaker 1: pick one? Where is it not one person? I don't
Speaker 1: think it's one. I don't think this is, you know,
Speaker 1: a man on a horse territory. I did not say that.
Speaker 1: I think Bratton is going to be essential. I think
Speaker 1: the mayor is going to be essential. I think there
Speaker 1: are lots and lots and lots of people in positions
Speaker 1: of you know, authority and respect and influence here who
Speaker 1: can be part of fixing people have to play their part.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people do want to. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've been in New York for ten years now and
Speaker 1: I have worked all over the country. This city has
Speaker 1: the highest quality criminal justice establishment, set of institutions of
Speaker 1: anywhere in the country. It's amazing, which is not saving
Speaker 1: us right at the moment. So I don't think it's
Speaker 1: going to be one or two people. I think what's
Speaker 1: going to happen is that some of the heat and
Speaker 1: the extremism will leave the moment that we're in. The
Speaker 1: moment will not go away, but I think the bonfire
Speaker 1: will will tone down a little bit. And I think
Speaker 1: then we have every bit the raw material we need
Speaker 1: to fix this. And I think New York in fact
Speaker 1: can be, needs to be, and is going to turn
Speaker 1: out to be one of the central national laboratories on this.
Speaker 1: I really do one last question. You have kids, not
Speaker 1: money own, right, Okay? Have you raised kids? How old?
Speaker 1: Different ages? But grown? Yeah, what do you tell them
Speaker 1: about if the cops pull them over? Do you ever
Speaker 1: have that conversation? Let me tell you what I do
Speaker 1: when I get pulled over. Right, I spend my entire
Speaker 1: life with law enforcement. When I get pulled over, I
Speaker 1: stopped the car, I rolled the windows down, I turned
Speaker 1: the ignition off, I turned the radio off. I put
Speaker 1: the keys in plain sight on the dashboard, and I
Speaker 1: put my wrists on top of the stirring wheel. Because
Speaker 1: I spend all this time with cops. And I got
Speaker 1: pulled over when I still lived in Boston while driving
Speaker 1: around a lovely young lady with long blond hair, and
Speaker 1: there wasn't any safe place to pull over. So we
Speaker 1: pulled into a small stripmall parking lot, and I went
Speaker 1: through my routine, and I looked over and my date
Speaker 1: was getting out of the car, and I looked at her,
Speaker 1: and I said, what are you doing? And she said, well,
Speaker 1: we're going to a party. There's a liquor store right here.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go get a bottle of wine. Sit down,
Speaker 1: don't move, show your hands. Those are not moments where
Speaker 1: you want to have this debate. You want to get
Speaker 1: through those moments and then we can have the debate.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think about that myself, which is that
Speaker 1: how do you send the signal of compliance to the
Speaker 1: police well, like you said, hands on the plain side
Speaker 1: of the dashboards, of the on the on the steering wheel.
Speaker 1: What's the one thing you think, because I asked our
Speaker 1: other guests, Johnny Turno from Maloit College, and I'll ask
Speaker 1: you the same thing, what's the one thing in their hearts?
Speaker 1: You think cops want most they want to go home
Speaker 1: safe at the end of the day, just like all
Speaker 1: the rest of us. And after that they want I
Speaker 1: was gonna say they want what I'm about to say,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's right. I think I want this
Speaker 1: for them. I think a lot of them are so
Speaker 1: deep in what they do every day it doesn't really
Speaker 1: occur to them to ask for this. But I don't
Speaker 1: know any more accomplished people than good season cops. Not
Speaker 1: all of them are good, not all of them are seasoned.
Speaker 1: But most of the people on any force, they've been
Speaker 1: there for a while. They've seen things that the rest
Speaker 1: of us cannot imagine. They're smart, they're creative, they're capable,
Speaker 1: they're physically skilled. They'll save your life in any number
Speaker 1: of different ways and then turn around and do something
Speaker 1: under and eighty degrees different and never never break stride.
Speaker 1: And the ones who have been doing it for a
Speaker 1: while and have not succumbed to cynicism or anger or
Speaker 1: the bottle or whatever. They are some of the most
Speaker 1: impressive human beings I have ever met in my life,
Speaker 1: and I wish more people understood that David Kennedy is
Speaker 1: the author of Don't Shoot One Man, a Street Fellowship,
Speaker 1: and the End of Violence in Inner City America. This
Speaker 1: is Alec Baldwin you're listening to. Here's the thing, M