Speaker 1: Pushing.
Speaker 2: I'm Khalidea Brad Muhammad.
Speaker 1: I'm Ben Austen. We're two best friends, one black, one white.
Speaker 2: I'm a historian and I'm a journalist. And this is
Speaker 2: some of my best friends are.
Speaker 1: Some of my best friends are dot dot dot. In
Speaker 1: this show, we wrestle with the challenges and the absurdities
Speaker 1: of a deeply divided and unequal country. And today we
Speaker 1: are back. After taking a little break in production, we
Speaker 1: have been recording some great episodes for you.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right, we are coming to you live from
Speaker 2: the Chicago Humanity's Festival, live live live with former congressmen
Speaker 2: and current Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, we talked to Ellison about prosecuting the police
Speaker 1: officers who killed George Floyd Man. He was murdered almost
Speaker 1: exactly three years ago. We also talked to Ellison about
Speaker 1: his new book, Break the Wheel, Ending the Cycle of
Speaker 1: police violence. We are so excited to share this conversation
Speaker 1: with you today and also to have a live show.
Speaker 2: Yes, let's do it.
Speaker 3: Your pin, Daddy's coming.
Speaker 1: Our theme song that you just heard is Little Lily
Speaker 1: by Avery R. Young and he was just named the
Speaker 1: poet laureate, the first poet laureate of Chicago.
Speaker 3: So just gotta shout that out.
Speaker 2: So we are really excited today to have our guests
Speaker 2: with us on stage here in Chicago. Our hometown brother
Speaker 2: Keith Ellison.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Glad to be with you, guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great to be with you.
Speaker 2: So we're going to get started, and I just want
Speaker 2: to say that we often bring our best friends on
Speaker 2: and while I can't claim that we're best friends, we
Speaker 2: have met each other a.
Speaker 3: Couple of times. Not yet. We're working on it. We
Speaker 3: get there, we get there.
Speaker 2: So I wanted to remind you that a few years
Speaker 2: ago in New Jersey, in an organization called Building One America
Speaker 2: brought together a bunch of progressives around the country. We
Speaker 2: were in South Jersey pretty not just a good place.
Speaker 2: But it's great to be back with you. A lot
Speaker 2: has changed for you, and in many ways, that's what
Speaker 2: we're here to talk about.
Speaker 3: Well, a lot has changed and a lot of stayed
Speaker 3: the same. I mean that some of the fights are
Speaker 3: still going on. We're trying to equalize power. We're trying
Speaker 3: to get people who don't have any power a little
Speaker 3: bit more say so in their own lives. And I
Speaker 3: can tell you this, moving from Congress to the Attorney
Speaker 3: General's office is lack a dream because what it would
Speaker 3: take a year or two to do, we can do
Speaker 3: in a week at the AG's office. So it's great
Speaker 3: to see you again.
Speaker 1: Man, Yeah, I like that. Khalil said that South Jersey
Speaker 1: was a nondescript player. So Khalil and I both grew
Speaker 1: up here in Chicago on the South Side in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties the Bears, and you grew up in Detroit
Speaker 1: mostly in the seventies. How did that shape your thinking? Like,
Speaker 1: how how has that formed who you are?
Speaker 3: So look, Chicago and Detroit have a lot in common.
Speaker 3: They both are destinations in the Great Migration. If you
Speaker 3: talk to any black person and a whole lot of
Speaker 3: white people, their grandparents are from Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia,
Speaker 3: and folks came up to Chicago to work in meatpacking whatever,
Speaker 3: and they came to Detroit to work on the auto plants.
Speaker 3: Both my parents have Southern roots. My mother's from Louisiana,
Speaker 3: my father's family's from Georgia. He was born in Detroit,
Speaker 3: but his father was born in rural Georgia, so that
Speaker 3: up south kind of is here. I mean with the
Speaker 3: best blues and barbecue you can get in the world,
Speaker 3: it's probably in Chicago, right. And so you know, I
Speaker 3: was born in nineteen sixty three. That's the year of
Speaker 3: the March on Washington. Earlier that June MegaR Evers was
Speaker 3: shot down and killed. Earlier in that year, John F.
Speaker 3: Kennedy said that the civil rights movement was based on
Speaker 3: a moral issue, and he gave this I don't know
Speaker 3: if any of you all remember or know this speech
Speaker 3: where he gave this speech and said, if any one
Speaker 3: of us had to live the life of I think
Speaker 3: he used the term negro, you know who would want
Speaker 3: to do it. You know, we say we're a country
Speaker 3: where there's no second class citizens except the Negro. We
Speaker 3: say we're a country that where everybody can stand on
Speaker 3: their own two feet and rise to the full measure
Speaker 3: of their talent, except the Negro. He has this refrain.
Speaker 3: Later on in that year, John F. Kennedy shot down murdered.
Speaker 3: So that is what I was born into. And I
Speaker 3: wasn't aware of it at the time, but maybe my
Speaker 3: body felt it. I can tell you this. On the
Speaker 3: issues of policing, I absolutely remember living on Eileen near
Speaker 3: Outer Drive and looking out of the window and remembering
Speaker 3: that my dad was out in the out in Detroit
Speaker 3: trying to help people. Use my dad as a physician, right,
Speaker 3: and he was attending to people who were in the riots, the.
Speaker 2: Detroita Detroit riot nineteen sixty seven, Right.
Speaker 3: I remember it. My brother remembers it, and I said,
Speaker 3: and we remember military vehicles going by. And I asked
Speaker 3: my brother why would military vehicles be going by? He said, well,
Speaker 3: the eight Mile Armory was only less than a mile away.
Speaker 3: And so I remember that. And I remember growing up
Speaker 3: in Detroit as the auto plants were just abandoning the city.
Speaker 3: And a lot of people wanted to say it's because
Speaker 3: African Americans were not good at leadership. But the real
Speaker 3: truth is for GM and Chrysler figured they could make
Speaker 3: it cheaper elsewhere. So I mean, does I get to
Speaker 3: the question, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm curious, did this Did you lose any white friends
Speaker 2: and that migration out of Detroit?
Speaker 3: You know, not really, you know not. You know, it's
Speaker 3: a funny thing. You know, Detroit is an interesting city
Speaker 3: along that lines, Remember Eminem comes from Detroit. Yep. Eight
Speaker 3: Mile is a real street. In Detroit. And it also
Speaker 3: you know, kid Rocks also from Detroit. So in Detroit
Speaker 3: you have a lot of interracial cooperation, and then you
Speaker 3: got and then it is a city of racing, class
Speaker 3: violence too. You got this complicated weird mixture stew gumbo
Speaker 3: in Detroit. Whereas some of your best friends are white,
Speaker 3: some of your and some and some guys who chased
Speaker 3: you across eight Mile Road and you were running for
Speaker 3: the fear of your life were also white. There's some
Speaker 3: black folks I ran into who made me a little
Speaker 3: worried about my safety too. So you know, so, uh,
Speaker 3: that's Detroit for you.
Speaker 2: There are two things you did not mention about Detroit
Speaker 2: and Chicago that they have in common. The first thing
Speaker 2: is that brothers were for coats in both cities, don't
Speaker 2: they everywhere, which which I have not seen everybody in
Speaker 2: any other city. I lived in Philadelphia, New York, Boston,
Speaker 2: you name it.
Speaker 3: They have no style. Man.
Speaker 2: So, aside from the fir Coats, is also the nation
Speaker 2: of Islam. So the nation of Islam is born in Detroit,
Speaker 2: grows out of the great migration. My great grandfather moves
Speaker 2: there in the nineteen twenties, raises his family eventually moved
Speaker 2: to Chicago. Talking about Elijah Mohammack. So talk about your
Speaker 2: own Muslim roots, how you become a Muslim and break
Speaker 2: through these barriers and politics in Minnesota in particular.
Speaker 3: Well, the people who introduced Islam to me were from
Speaker 3: the NI. A good friend of mine who's just just
Speaker 3: went to his reward. His name was Abdullah bel Amme
Speaker 3: and he was about six foot five, but I bet
Speaker 3: you he weighed one hundred and forty pounds and he
Speaker 3: was the Emam. And I first, you know, heard about Islam,
Speaker 3: reading about people like Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali. I
Speaker 3: first met. The first person who was told me about
Speaker 3: Islam was a guy who was a Libyan student foreign
Speaker 3: exchange student. One day, I was at Wayne State University
Speaker 3: and we were studying calculus and he on a Friday afternoon,
Speaker 3: he's like, hey, man, I gotta go. What do you
Speaker 3: mean you gotta go? Well, I got to go. I
Speaker 3: mean it's time for me to do something. I said, Well,
Speaker 3: he said, why don't you come with me? I said, fine,
Speaker 3: I got nothing else to do. I walk up and
Speaker 3: there's all these shoes everywhere. Well, you got to take
Speaker 3: off your shoes and we walk into the room and
Speaker 3: there's sheets across the carpet. We got to sit on
Speaker 3: the floor, so I do. And I heard a message
Speaker 3: that stuck with me until this very moment.
Speaker 1: What was the message that stuck with you?
Speaker 3: The message of Mohammad that you know. His message was
Speaker 3: for the poor, the black, the racially sidelined. It was
Speaker 3: a message of human oneness, of the unity of all humanity.
Speaker 3: And hearing stories about Bilal, who was a black man
Speaker 3: in servitude, who was freed by his belief in that message.
Speaker 3: And look, I grew up Catholic, right, everybody in my
Speaker 3: family's Catholic. We're from Louere, Louisiana Catholics, right, even though
Speaker 3: I had all that Catholic training, I this is the message.
Speaker 3: They clicked in my head and it made sense to me,
Speaker 3: and it makes sense to me until this very second.
Speaker 3: In fact, we just ended Ramadan. And the interesting thing
Speaker 3: about me being a Muslim, when I ran for the
Speaker 3: State Legislature, I would fast for Ramadan and I'd go
Speaker 3: to pray and nobody cared, like nobody cared at all.
Speaker 3: But when I ran for Congress, it was this big, giant,
Speaker 3: humongous international incident and I just I always ponder why,
Speaker 3: you know, and it's kind of like, well, you know,
Speaker 3: it's five years after nine to eleven, and people didn't
Speaker 3: know what it meant to have a Muslim in the
Speaker 3: US Congress, and they wanted to know. And some people
Speaker 3: entertained their worst fears, and some of them, all of them,
Speaker 3: nearly were many of them were irrational fears.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, yeah, thank you for telling us that. And
Speaker 1: certainly my buddy here Khalil Muhammad, after nine to eleven
Speaker 1: has been stopped at many airport, Thank you for telling
Speaker 1: us that. And I want to ask you another question.
Speaker 1: Why the law? So I think I think your grandfather
Speaker 1: is a leader in the NAACP, And so why do
Speaker 1: you go into the law and why civil rights law?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I I majored in economics because my
Speaker 3: dad ninety four years young, still grouchy and opinionated. He
Speaker 3: always was like, well follow the money. You know, if
Speaker 3: you figure out the economics, you can figure out a
Speaker 3: lot of things. Right, So I studied that, and uh,
Speaker 3: but then when I was at Wayne State, I started
Speaker 3: asking myself, what is what do you do with an
Speaker 3: economics degree? I had no idea, Now what I've found
Speaker 3: out since is there's a lot you could do. But
Speaker 3: I didn't know anything except for being a college teacher.
Speaker 3: So I took the lside, you know. And so I
Speaker 3: thought it would be the right thing for me because
Speaker 3: my mother always told me, you know, you are so argumentative,
Speaker 3: you should maybe be a lawyer. And so those two things,
Speaker 3: that family background and just you know what God made
Speaker 3: me good at, which is uss and with folks, sent
Speaker 3: me in a particular direction to why civil rights? You know,
Speaker 3: you know it's funny, man. I always feel like I
Speaker 3: was destined to it because when I got out of
Speaker 3: law school, I had a wife's two children and some
Speaker 3: student loan debt and I needed to make a little
Speaker 3: bit of money. I was twenty five years old and
Speaker 3: I was trying to figure out and I got to
Speaker 3: offer to go work with this huge white law firm
Speaker 3: downtown Minneapolis.
Speaker 2: So we're talking about mid nineteen seventies or early ladies.
Speaker 3: We're talking about nineteen ninety and so it was so
Speaker 3: that somebody basically said, would you go to this silk
Speaker 3: stocking law firm? And I was like, what are they paying?
Speaker 3: You know? So I ended up there and I started
Speaker 3: doing all the pro bono that I could wed a
Speaker 3: We did a death row case in Union Paris, Louisiana,
Speaker 3: got a man named Albert Barrell not only out of
Speaker 3: off death row, but actually exonerated. So that was a
Speaker 3: wonderful thing. And I started doing all this stuff with
Speaker 3: landlord tenant stuff and then you know, look, my heart
Speaker 3: wasn't there. So within three years I applied for a
Speaker 3: job to be the director of the Legal Rights Center,
Speaker 3: which is essentially a nonprofit engine law office. Got the
Speaker 3: job and have a look back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great. Well, listen, we are excited to have
Speaker 2: a conversation that takes us from your origin story to
Speaker 2: the moment that has redefined the history of prosecutustion of
Speaker 2: police officers. We're going to take a quick break and
Speaker 2: we'll pick that up after the break.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back, y'all.
Speaker 1: So I think people might know that Keith as the
Speaker 1: State's Attorney of Minnesota, tried and convicted Derek Chalvin, who
Speaker 1: is the police officer who knelt on George Floyd's neck
Speaker 1: and killed him and won a conviction. And we want
Speaker 1: you to take us back to that moment and maybe
Speaker 1: can you describe what Minneapolis was like in the aftermath
Speaker 1: of George Floyd's death.
Speaker 3: Well, let me just say slightly before that tragic occurred,
Speaker 3: you should know that, you know, I love Minneapolis, and
Speaker 3: Minneapolis has a certain sense of itself every he does, right.
Speaker 3: We cling to Hubert H. Humphrey and how he was
Speaker 3: he in nineteen forty seventy at the Philadelphia Democratic Convention,
Speaker 3: he said, we have to walk out of the dark
Speaker 3: night of states rights into the bright sunshine of human rights.
Speaker 3: And we were so proud that we passed one of
Speaker 3: the first we say, the first I don't know if
Speaker 3: it's true. I never researched it. Human rights municipal ordinance
Speaker 3: in the country. And how there were all these and
Speaker 3: how we're this city that you know, really embraces the
Speaker 3: diverse gifts of the population.
Speaker 2: It's like one of the largest Somalai populations.
Speaker 3: Right right, and we pride ourselves on how, you know,
Speaker 3: new Americans come there, you know, like the Somali community,
Speaker 3: the among community, the kur In community were from Burma,
Speaker 3: and we think of ourselves this way. And there's this
Speaker 3: I don't know if y'all ever heard this, but Minnesotans
Speaker 3: will say Minnesota nice because we're so nice. I don't
Speaker 3: know if they're that nice think of themselves as being
Speaker 3: very nice right now. That is and I don't say
Speaker 3: this in a derogatory way at all. That is a myth, right,
Speaker 3: And it's not that it's not true. It's just that
Speaker 3: it's not the only truth. Right. It's not that it's
Speaker 3: not true, because people really are good and decent. But
Speaker 3: there is another side. We did have restrictive covenants in
Speaker 3: like literally thousands of homes, you know, two hours away
Speaker 3: the Duluth lynching. You did have three black men lynched
Speaker 3: at a light pole in Duluth. We do have in
Speaker 3: man Cato. There was the largest mass hanging of Dakota
Speaker 3: people in the history of the country, the largest mass
Speaker 3: hanging in man Cato of the indigenous community. So these
Speaker 3: things occurred. So we're not hypocrites. It's just like people
Speaker 3: all over the world, we emphasize the positive. George Floyd
Speaker 3: caused Minnesotans to really reflect on how we might not
Speaker 3: be somehow different along racial lines than the rest of
Speaker 3: the country. And I think people are still trying to
Speaker 3: figure out what does this all mean and how it's
Speaker 3: not an anomaly. And there were a lot of things
Speaker 3: that happened that would have told us that this easily
Speaker 3: could happen here. And so that that's something that I
Speaker 3: think is important, because if you think you're an American
Speaker 3: community that's somehow immune from race class violence in America,
Speaker 3: you're not. It's closer than you think it is, and
Speaker 3: you better do something about it before you have a
Speaker 3: George Floyd incident.
Speaker 2: So well, I'm gonna say so. I mean, one of
Speaker 2: the things that you're talking about is that Minnesota has
Speaker 2: a reputation for being a progressive city and having family there.
Speaker 2: I've been to Minnesota many times. There's a lot of like,
Speaker 2: you know, there are these pockets of America where people
Speaker 2: are like, there's lots of interracial families. You know, diversity
Speaker 2: is celebrated, correct, right, And so part of what you're
Speaker 2: saying is that this tension exploded onto the streets in
Speaker 2: a way that the progressive community was was part of
Speaker 2: the ferment already and then in the wake of like
Speaker 2: and I really resist the idea of calling what happened
Speaker 2: to Floyda tragedy because I think part of the way
Speaker 2: in which we both isolated as an incident and also
Speaker 2: imagine it as exceptional reduces our capacity to see the
Speaker 2: systems as they function or, as many progressives would say,
Speaker 2: were designed to do what they do.
Speaker 3: I'll buy that, you know, I only mean in the
Speaker 3: sense that it was a horrible thing that happened to him, yeh.
Speaker 3: But but to the degree that that word kind of
Speaker 3: like pulls it out of the general fabric, I agree
Speaker 3: with you.
Speaker 2: So let's let's let's stay with this point for a
Speaker 2: little bit longer. Because one of the things you do
Speaker 2: in the book, and Keith's book is called break the Will.
Speaker 2: Ending the cycle of police violence comes out in May,
Speaker 2: so you all are learning about and hearing about it
Speaker 2: well before the book is actually released. But one of
Speaker 2: the things you say in the book is that there's
Speaker 2: a roll call of victims in the Minneapolis Saint Paul regions.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Filando Castillo may be perhaps most recognizable by name to
Speaker 2: a lot of people because he was killed when an
Speaker 2: officer asked him for identification, and as he reached for
Speaker 2: that identification, and as his girlfriend recorded it on Facebook live,
Speaker 2: he was shot dead in the passenger seat. But there's
Speaker 2: Jamar Clark, there are many other names.
Speaker 1: Do you think there's something about Minneapolis Saint Paul. That
Speaker 1: is just typical of every American city. Or do you
Speaker 1: think there's something you know, exceptional about it that there
Speaker 1: are a high number of cases, or maybe there aren't
Speaker 1: a high number of cases. Maybe that's this is what
Speaker 1: we're seeing across the country.
Speaker 3: I have to say, what is unique about Minneapolis Saint
Speaker 3: Paul is that in our mind we are well intentioned
Speaker 3: open up opportunity, but our reality is like the rest
Speaker 3: of the country. You see what I'm saying. We're not worse,
Speaker 3: We're just right. I mean, you know, I mean what
Speaker 3: we saw in Memphis the other day. How many incidents
Speaker 3: like that? You talk about the killing of Tyree Nickels.
Speaker 3: How many things like that have happened since then? Right?
Speaker 3: So that's the tragedy, is that I think that we
Speaker 3: need to come to grips with the fact that this
Speaker 3: problem must be addressed, and if we ever did, we'd
Speaker 3: save one hundred million dollars in Section nineteen eighty three payouts.
Speaker 2: These are settlements that police settlements have for local deaths.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're in Chicago, so it's more like seven hundred
Speaker 1: million right over the last twenty five years.
Speaker 3: So how many more playgrounds, how many more lighting, how
Speaker 3: many more potholes? How many more community centers, how many more?
Speaker 3: How many how many more raised? How much more? And
Speaker 3: raises for city employees. I mean, police settlements alone have
Speaker 3: a devastating impact on the city. If we just solved
Speaker 3: the problem, if we broke the cycle, if we could
Speaker 3: do a lot and let alone the fact that about
Speaker 3: every twenty years or some period of time, there is
Speaker 3: a civil unrest. And I know words matter, so some folks,
Speaker 3: I'm spuck. I'm speaking about what some people might call
Speaker 3: a riot, but others might call something else, and uprising
Speaker 3: what those are exceedingly expensive to the city, not to
Speaker 3: mention the loss of trust. I believe that police brutality
Speaker 3: actually has a causal relationship to crime, because if you
Speaker 3: won't call, and you think you're snitching and all that,
Speaker 3: you're not going to get their responsiveness and the cooperation
Speaker 3: needed in order to promote public safety, and you greenlight
Speaker 3: to people who do commit crime. And I'm a prosecutor,
Speaker 3: I assure you that some people really do make crimes,
Speaker 3: and so police brutality needs to be solved financial reasons,
Speaker 3: but also for safety reasons.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you or have you talked more
Speaker 1: about a decision you made, your strategy in prosecuting the
Speaker 1: police officer in this case that it struck me in
Speaker 1: reading about it, that you went and spoke to your brother, right,
Speaker 1: and you tell him about about all the people who
Speaker 1: witnessed this in the community. And your brother says, well,
Speaker 1: did they know George Floyd? And you're like, none of
Speaker 1: them knew George Floyd. They didn't know him personally, and like, so,
Speaker 1: why did they step up and take phone and try
Speaker 1: to stop the police. And he said to you, oh,
Speaker 1: it's the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And he said, look, you know, people went right
Speaker 3: on by that man who was bleeding on Jericho Road.
Speaker 3: And those people were learned in religion, they were supposed
Speaker 3: to be, they were the responsible people, and they abandoned
Speaker 3: him and walked by, were wre more concerned about their
Speaker 3: own welfare and benefit. And the good Samaritan not only
Speaker 3: loaded the man up on the donkey and took him
Speaker 3: to an end and said, I will pay any charges
Speaker 3: he has on my way back. And he said, these
Speaker 3: people who didn't know George Floyd demonstrated true love of
Speaker 3: humanity by literally sacrificing themselves. And who were these people?
Speaker 3: There was no college professors on the scene. There were
Speaker 3: no priests on the scene, there were no reverends on
Speaker 3: the scene. There were three seventeen year old girls, a
Speaker 3: nine year old girl, a sixty two year old hustler,
Speaker 3: a thirty three year old mixed martial artist. And that's
Speaker 3: who was there in a firefighter and there was a
Speaker 3: fire And guess what they were a mixed race group.
Speaker 3: And here's another thing. So were the people who killed
Speaker 3: George Floyd. Yeah, we talk about Derek Chauvin, Well Jay
Speaker 3: Alexander King's black two tiles, Mom.
Speaker 1: They're the police officers who were standing by watching.
Speaker 3: Two of them.
Speaker 2: One was holding his legs, one.
Speaker 3: Had physically on his body.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: But but there was something spiritual that happened, because a
Speaker 3: spirit moved among those people on that street, and they demanded,
Speaker 3: they yelled, and even as they were calling on Chauvin
Speaker 3: the police to stop, they still had faith in the police.
Speaker 3: They said, we're going to call the police on the police,
Speaker 3: and they did.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Can we lean into the trial a little bit? Because sure,
Speaker 2: in many ways, the structure of this book is chapter
Speaker 2: by chapter sort of how the system worked in this
Speaker 2: particular prosecution.
Speaker 3: It was made to how it was made to correct, right.
Speaker 2: I'm won't give you a chance, okay, to share it
Speaker 2: because part of what is possible in your telling of
Speaker 2: this story, the blow by blow sort of legal machinery
Speaker 2: and action in the way that, as you say your metaphor,
Speaker 2: tried to break the wheel, tried to disrupt the way
Speaker 2: this normally goes. Our series of interventions. Now, we won't
Speaker 2: have the time in this conversation to unpack all of
Speaker 2: those interventions.
Speaker 3: We still want the people to buy the book, to right.
Speaker 2: Good point, But there are a couple of things that
Speaker 2: I think that I want to throw out there and
Speaker 2: want to frame them sort of as if you were
Speaker 2: speaking to prosecutors around the country. So one we get
Speaker 2: the usual lie in the original press story and not
Speaker 2: the press police account.
Speaker 3: No, it was a press it was a press release,
Speaker 3: press release, right.
Speaker 2: And then the complaint itself, which i'dn't like you to
Speaker 2: share with them, sets up essentially from the prosecutor standpoint,
Speaker 2: a defense of Chauvin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this tragedy happens around the eight to nine
Speaker 3: o'clock hour, and I mean tragedy in that a man
Speaker 3: lost his life. The MPD Public Information issues a press
Speaker 3: statement saying that George Floyd died of a medical emergency,
Speaker 3: no mention of force at all. Then what happens is
Speaker 3: within a few days the medical examiner gets it, and
Speaker 3: the medical examiner makes a statement that if George Floyd
Speaker 3: was found in this medical condition in his home, I
Speaker 3: would think it was an od no mention of a knee,
Speaker 3: no mention in the fact that there's all kinds of
Speaker 3: video of it, kind of ignoring all that, and then says,
Speaker 3: you know, and then it won't ever We got medical
Speaker 3: examiners who ultimately said, this is clearly mechanical asphyxia. If
Speaker 3: you lay somebody prone on their chest, lay and get
Speaker 3: on their back for nine minutes, there's not anyone in
Speaker 3: this audience who wouldn't be dead.
Speaker 2: At the rest the language for kind of suffocating someone
Speaker 2: to yeah.
Speaker 3: Right. But the medical examitor said, look, we didn't see Okay,
Speaker 3: now we're going to get technical a little bit. We
Speaker 3: didn't see any of the petiki, which are these really
Speaker 3: small little hemorrhages that you will get in your eye
Speaker 3: when you're choked to death, or any disruptions or injuries
Speaker 3: to the next structure because we didn't see those. I
Speaker 3: can't say it's as fix you. Well, the video and
Speaker 3: everything you're seeing shows you that that's what it was.
Speaker 3: But he said, I can't say that. I will say
Speaker 3: that it was subdual. It was law enforcement involved subdual
Speaker 3: restraint and neck compression, which was good enough for me.
Speaker 3: He did call it a homicide, but some of the
Speaker 3: early language really did create a lot of confusion. And
Speaker 3: so you know, and then the complaint got drafted. The
Speaker 3: original complaint didn't have second degree murderer had third and
Speaker 3: in Minnesota, the third degree order. The Supreme Court found
Speaker 3: that it was inappropriate charge. So if we didn't charge
Speaker 3: this case, we'd have been left with nothing but manslaughter too,
Speaker 3: which is culpable negligence. So y'all follow what I just said. Yes,
Speaker 3: So we so that the complaint they drafted would have
Speaker 3: ultimately ended up in a manslaughter too. The complaint that
Speaker 3: we came back and redrafted resulted in second degree murder.
Speaker 3: I mean to me, if without our intervention, I'm not
Speaker 3: even sure the case there's a there's an argument to
Speaker 3: be made that this thing could have gone extremely different.
Speaker 1: H We're going to take one more quick break and
Speaker 1: we're going to come back and talk about breaking the wheel.
Speaker 3: Keith.
Speaker 1: I mean, so you win a conviction, Yeah, and you're
Speaker 1: you're talking about breaking the wheel of police violence?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Is a conviction of a police officer breaking the wheel?
Speaker 1: Does that actually do the work of changing the cycle
Speaker 1: of violence.
Speaker 3: It's a necessary but insufficient thing. Because let me tell
Speaker 3: you why I say this, because I think there's really
Speaker 3: only two things that are going to straighten this problem out,
Speaker 3: and that is criminal prosecution of criminal activity by law
Speaker 3: enforcement and administrative firings of people who are just not
Speaker 3: good police officer or a bad police officers and break
Speaker 3: the rules. As I say this, the real people I
Speaker 3: believe are going to benefit are the of the remaining
Speaker 3: police And I'm telling you, within a week after within
Speaker 3: a week, fourteen Minneapolis police officers wrote an open letter saying,
Speaker 3: we absolutely condemn what happened and we're committed to a
Speaker 3: better future. The longest serving police officer in the Minneapols
Speaker 3: Police Department took the stand and denounce what happened, and
Speaker 3: so did the police chief. So there is a thing
Speaker 3: going on within policing where police were like, look, I
Speaker 3: joined to help people. I didn't joined to do what
Speaker 3: you're doing.
Speaker 2: You know, you've already started to talk about the lessons
Speaker 2: from the Chauvin trial and the implications for how criminal
Speaker 2: prosecution has to be a huge part of the overall
Speaker 2: strategy of police reform wherever it's taking place. And that's
Speaker 2: the conversation that we've been having since the summer of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, this national conversation about police reform. And I
Speaker 2: just want you to sort of give us two things
Speaker 2: you think just out the gate nationally we should be
Speaker 2: doing that we are not already doing in this country,
Speaker 2: and maybe even consider the George Floyd Policing Act in
Speaker 2: its own limitations or not.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, let me just say before I get to those,
Speaker 3: you've got to prosecute criminal behavior, and you've got to
Speaker 3: fire and administratively respond to rule violations. If you don't
Speaker 3: do these things, nothing else you do is going to work.
Speaker 3: But here's the good news. This is a fixable problem.
Speaker 3: It really really is.
Speaker 2: And I know that we're listening, right, we're not sure.
Speaker 3: Well, well, let me just tell you this. I know
Speaker 3: that there's some folks will say this system depends structurally
Speaker 3: on some people being on the bottom end of it,
Speaker 3: and people being the system requires victims, and the way
Speaker 3: that the system maintains itself is through police violence and
Speaker 3: other things. I know that that I'm aware of that
Speaker 3: point of view. What I would say is, I think
Speaker 3: that point of view is a little bit too cynical.
Speaker 3: And the reason why I say that is because we've
Speaker 3: seen cities where these cities are not in nirvana, and
Speaker 3: I'm not offering them as perfect, but things have gotten
Speaker 3: dramatically better in Newark, New Jersey. They have gotten better
Speaker 3: in Camden, New Jersey. Right. Well, it takes leadership. It
Speaker 3: takes people like Rasbaraka to say this is the way
Speaker 3: we're gonna do things differently, and it does take that
Speaker 3: kind of leadership. But having said that, what I would
Speaker 3: say is that we've got to have a national registry
Speaker 3: so that if you are fired for bad policing, you
Speaker 3: cannot just go to some other state and start policing.
Speaker 3: An example of what I mean is there's a guy
Speaker 3: named Loewen who was found by one Cleveland area police
Speaker 3: department to be so unqualified that they said, get out
Speaker 3: of here, you can't police here. He shows up in Cleveland,
Speaker 3: gets a job and then kill twelve year old to
Speaker 3: mere rights. It's shocking to me that this guy was
Speaker 3: found to be unfit for a police department, but could
Speaker 3: just go get a police job somewhere else. So that's
Speaker 3: one thing that we've absolutely got to do. And then
Speaker 3: the other thing that we've got to do is Okay,
Speaker 3: so we've gotten all this body warn camera video now
Speaker 3: nearly every it's a common thing we use it to
Speaker 3: We use it in litigation to prove or disprove what happened.
Speaker 3: But do we use it as a training exercise. We
Speaker 3: need to use it like on a every six months
Speaker 3: or every four months. Come on in here, see what
Speaker 3: you did, See what you didn't do. You can do
Speaker 3: this better. Why'd you talk to this person this way?
Speaker 3: One thing I'll tell you, And this sounds petty, but
Speaker 3: I believe it's very true. Think about the people who
Speaker 3: don't die as a result of a negative police community interaction,
Speaker 3: the people who survive. How many people I know who've
Speaker 3: been called foul names, racist names, kicked in the butt,
Speaker 3: slapped in the head. The idea that you're going to
Speaker 3: scare the population into submission is false. People will rebel.
Speaker 3: They don't like it. They're not gonna just take it.
Speaker 3: So we we've got to change the whole culture of
Speaker 3: the police policing to be one of guardianship and support
Speaker 3: as opposed to you better do what I'm gonna say,
Speaker 3: or I'm gonna go upside your head. This got we've
Speaker 3: got to do it differently than we've been doing it.
Speaker 2: On the body cameras, uh, and this Tyree Nichols's executioners
Speaker 2: were clearly aware that their body cameras were running who
Speaker 2: look staging, We're staging a resisting arrest charge because that
Speaker 2: was the mechanism they used to say. This guy was resisting.
Speaker 2: This is why we kept delivering blows to him. So
Speaker 2: that's not to say body cameras can't help, but their
Speaker 2: police officers are training themselves also how to get around.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But well but here's what I'll say, though, Khalil.
Speaker 3: While while they clearly were trying to lie and say,
Speaker 3: oh he was so strong, Oh, they were making up
Speaker 3: a story, and anybody who watched the team could see
Speaker 3: them making up a story.
Speaker 2: Except we live in Trump America.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, the people say, look, with those who don't
Speaker 3: want to see, ain't going to see. But for anybody
Speaker 3: who's remotely honest about what they were looking at could
Speaker 3: tell we're watching you concocta story.
Speaker 1: So I want to you talked about that laundry list
Speaker 1: of incredibly valuable reforms to policing, and you know, I
Speaker 1: want to talk about another lesson of the George Floyd experience.
Speaker 1: I mean in our recent history, because we all just
Speaker 1: lived through this where those suddenly all felt like possibilities.
Speaker 1: And I was reporting a book where I was going
Speaker 1: to parole hearings and I could hear month to month
Speaker 1: the country, the people around me be becoming more lenient,
Speaker 1: being becoming more open to changing the criminal justice system,
Speaker 1: and then it being supercharged after the death of George
Speaker 1: Floyd and all those policies that you just listed, there
Speaker 1: were municipalities across the country who are like, damn, we
Speaker 1: are going to do this right. And then the history
Speaker 1: that we lived through is that they didn't happen. That
Speaker 1: this extreme backlash that we just went through, where we
Speaker 1: didn't even pass in the US Congress of George Floyd
Speaker 1: Act that died in the Senate. And so if that's
Speaker 1: the lesson of all this, that we can't even sustain
Speaker 1: it after the most you know, for most of our lifetimes,
Speaker 1: the biggest mass protest, and it is the biggest math
Speaker 1: protests in the history of the United States. And so
Speaker 1: you know it didn't happen.
Speaker 3: Well, by the.
Speaker 2: Way, just for the record, I knew that Biden went
Speaker 2: on the record saying fun fund fund the police. Minneapolis
Speaker 2: repealed its own attempt to rename and redefined policing as
Speaker 2: the Department of Public Safety. And we've had mayors like
Speaker 2: Eric Adams run basically on tough on crime messages, reinstituting
Speaker 2: street crime units like the kinds that were disbanded in
Speaker 2: the wake of the stop in first revelations.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, what is all those things you said are true?
Speaker 3: But so is it? So is this true? The state
Speaker 3: of Minnesota did ban choke holes, We did pass the
Speaker 3: Police Officer Status and Training Board to bake to be
Speaker 3: more to be tough for on police violence and misconduct.
Speaker 3: We did. We had a number of reforms. So while
Speaker 3: I'm not saying that you guys are wrong, you're clearly right.
Speaker 3: But what I'm saying is that there's more to the
Speaker 3: story than that. The real question is what are we
Speaker 3: going to do? Because because one of the things that
Speaker 3: I think is a product of the pandemic, is that
Speaker 3: there was a measurable increase in crime. There just was, folks.
Speaker 3: And so the question is have we learned anything? Are
Speaker 3: we going to go back to nineteen ninety four? Are
Speaker 3: we going to go back to nineteen seventy two? And
Speaker 3: what are we going to do? Are we what are
Speaker 3: we gonna Why don't we learn something from those eras
Speaker 3: that led to massive cars array and the kind of
Speaker 3: green lighted excessive force. Every moment is still a moment
Speaker 3: where we can make the changes that we need to.
Speaker 3: The question is are we committed? Will we do it?
Speaker 3: And I think the answer is yes, because ultimately the
Speaker 3: tough on crime message doesn't make you safer, right, And
Speaker 3: so we've got to keep fighting back, keep pushing back,
Speaker 3: and I believe that we will have the George Ford
Speaker 3: Justice of Policing pass and because I'm not quitting, Okay, right,
Speaker 3: all right, and thank you all very much.
Speaker 2: So we're almost done. We are coming in for landing.
Speaker 2: But Ben's going to take us home to Chicago to
Speaker 2: close out this conversation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we you know, Kim Fox, who is our
Speaker 1: district attorney, is stepping down. So We're going to very
Speaker 1: soon have a new district attorney, we have a new mayor,
Speaker 1: We're going to have a new police chief. So you know,
Speaker 1: this is a city that has been trying to break
Speaker 1: the wheel of police violence and police reform since Lakwan MacDonald,
Speaker 1: but for decades before that. Also, what do you feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, for a place like Chicago, for a place
Speaker 1: like Minnesota, Minneapolis, for cities across the country, what is
Speaker 1: the chief impediment for these changes that we're talking about.
Speaker 3: Well, I wish I could narrow it to just one,
Speaker 3: but I'm going to start with I'll just say this,
Speaker 3: the cheap impediment is that it's not always easy to
Speaker 3: maintain dual thoughts in one mind. Here's what I mean.
Speaker 3: Can we have a system that is addresses and holds
Speaker 3: accountable people who commit heinous murder and has compassion within
Speaker 3: it at the same time. That's what we get. That
Speaker 3: is the balancing act, because you know, when something heinous
Speaker 3: like this happens to Zire and mckeeper, the impulse is
Speaker 3: to to retaliate with retribution against a person who did it.
Speaker 3: I would say that that's often not the best way
Speaker 3: to keep the community safe, but let's not go to
Speaker 3: the other end of the spectrum where we're just gonna
Speaker 3: let that person go, because that might not even be
Speaker 3: good for that person, and it certainly is bad for
Speaker 3: victims and community. We've got to have some balance, do
Speaker 3: you think politically?
Speaker 1: I mean, you said that the choices are, you know,
Speaker 1: throwing the book, you know, sending someone away for life,
Speaker 1: or like no punishment. That seems like a false kind of.
Speaker 3: I absolutely agree, and that's actually, well, that's what I'm
Speaker 3: trying to say, Ben, it's a false choice. We can
Speaker 3: do better than that. Our imaginations can take us in
Speaker 3: a better place than that. We've got to start imagining
Speaker 3: that doing a horrible thing is is horrible, and we're
Speaker 3: gonna treat it like it's horrible. But it doesn't mean
Speaker 3: you've been banished from humanity forever. The problem is we're
Speaker 3: always this or that. Just like you pointed out, Ben,
Speaker 3: we don't have the tools, and because we won't allow ourselves,
Speaker 3: we're so we're animated by anger or we're animated by
Speaker 3: a feeling. The system is completely racist and unjustin and humane.
Speaker 3: So now we're not going to do anything. We've got
Speaker 3: to understand that, you know, that look, murders, rapes, robberies,
Speaker 3: they happen, and I don't care how progressive you are,
Speaker 3: you can't wish them away. They're there. We've got to
Speaker 3: have a response that gives people a realistic sense of
Speaker 3: safety and accountability. And yet at the same time, let's
Speaker 3: never forget that second chances and mercy are part of
Speaker 3: what we've got to be doing too. One of the
Speaker 3: things I'm real proud of is in Minnesota, we used
Speaker 3: to say that after you've got out of prison, you
Speaker 3: can't vote until you're on probation or parole, and that
Speaker 3: might be a decade later after you get out. We've
Speaker 3: gotten rid of that. Now you can vote as soon
Speaker 3: as you get out. We're proud of that. That's saying
Speaker 3: that now now people who are in the criminal justice
Speaker 3: system become a voting block suddenly. And believe it or not,
Speaker 3: they're not uh, they're not particularly lenient, you know. They
Speaker 3: they they got firm opinions on what works and what doesn't.
Speaker 3: But you know what, you know, I tell you, this
Speaker 3: is an ongoing conversation that we just cannot quit on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're sort of ending where we could just like
Speaker 1: talk all day about this.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, so we want to we want to just
Speaker 2: say thank you so much, thank you for joining us
Speaker 2: this afternoon here in Chicago for this conversation we are.
Speaker 1: We are going to be watching.
Speaker 2: You closely, holding you accountable at least states representative and
Speaker 2: also exuding the values that you're articulated. Today's thank you
Speaker 2: so much for coming on. Some of my best friends are.
Speaker 3: Thanks been, and thank you Khalil and uh hey, listen
Speaker 3: to the podcast and check out Break the Wheel too.
Speaker 2: All right, Some of my best Friends Are is a
Speaker 2: production of Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted
Speaker 2: by me, Khalil Dubron Muhammad and my best friend Ben Austin.
Speaker 1: It's produced by Lucy Sullivan. Our associate producer is Rachel Yang.
Speaker 1: It's edited by Sarah Nix with help from Keishel Williams.
Speaker 1: Our engineer is Amanda ka Wang, and our managing producer
Speaker 1: is Constanza Guyardo at Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Thanks to Leital Mollat, Julia Barton, Heather Fain, Carly Migliori,
Speaker 2: John Schnarz, Retta Cone, and Jacob Weisberg.
Speaker 1: Our theme song, Little Lily, is by fellow chicagoan the
Speaker 1: brilliant Avery R. Young from his album Tubman. You definitely
Speaker 1: want to check out his music at his website, Averyaryong
Speaker 1: dot com.
Speaker 2: You can find Pushkin on all social platforms at Pushkin
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Speaker 2: Thank you,