Speaker 1: In his first public speech since he was sworn in
Speaker 1: as the nation's top law enforcement officer, Attorney General Jeff
Speaker 1: Sessions painted a bleak picture of violence in America. Certain
Speaker 1: major cities are seeing dramatic, I mean really dramatic increases
Speaker 1: in murder rates Chicago, Baltimore, your New Orleans, uh, and
Speaker 1: so lots of this out there that's driving a sense
Speaker 1: that we're in danger. Though crime rates remained near historic
Speaker 1: lows across much of the country, Sessions said they were
Speaker 1: tacking up. He told the National Association of Attorneys General
Speaker 1: that one of his top priorities will be to reverse
Speaker 1: the rise in violent crimes, and that law enforcement needs
Speaker 1: to crack down on drug use, including marijuana. He also
Speaker 1: said the Justice Department would pull back on civil rights
Speaker 1: investigations of police departments that were a staple of the
Speaker 1: Obama administration. My guests are Douglas Burman, Professor at Ohio
Speaker 1: State University Moritz College of Law, and Eugene O'Donnell, professor
Speaker 1: at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Eugene, let's start
Speaker 1: with Session statements that were in danger of rising violence.
Speaker 1: Do the statistics support him? Well, the statistics don't. But
Speaker 1: there's reason to believe that disorder is on the rise,
Speaker 1: and a sense of public our needs is on the rise,
Speaker 1: and there is gun violence. And the other thing the
Speaker 1: Astorney General said, which is crystal clear, is the police
Speaker 1: officers in this environment are afraid to initiate proactive activity
Speaker 1: and are afraid indeed to solve crimes. So you have
Speaker 1: cities like Chicago where people are shooting and shooting again
Speaker 1: the scores of it's not hundreds of people unapprehended for
Speaker 1: murdering or shooting people, and a a environment in which
Speaker 1: an elite has captured This conversation pushed out people on
Speaker 1: the ground there wisdom, their sense of uh concern living
Speaker 1: in the in the neighborhoods has been obscured by people who,
Speaker 1: frankly by their own public safety. At this point, we
Speaker 1: have an apart side system in which the four are
Speaker 1: left of their own devices, the well to do you'll
Speaker 1: secure themselves At this point, do you agree, Judd, uh?
Speaker 1: Well at nuanced in somewhat different ways. Actually had to
Speaker 1: start with the highlighting that the statistics do show in
Speaker 1: particular cities that we've had a pretty significant uptick in
Speaker 1: violent crime. Uh. But that comes on the heels of
Speaker 1: in two thousand and fourteen record low levels across the board,
Speaker 1: and so that contextualizes a little bit that that uh
Speaker 1: A not that significant uptick, looks like a high percentage,
Speaker 1: but it is something worthy to be concerned about. At
Speaker 1: the same time, UH, there are some cities New York, Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: a few others where a violent crime continues to decline
Speaker 1: to record low numbers. And so one of the things
Speaker 1: that I'm hopeful that the Attorney General is is going
Speaker 1: to try to do, and there's a new task force
Speaker 1: UH that's specifically designed to take a look at this
Speaker 1: is try to figure out, Okay, what is working in
Speaker 1: certain cities where there's the same sets of pressures, there's
Speaker 1: the same set of concerns about proactive policing, and yet
Speaker 1: crime keeps going down, whereas in other cities it seems
Speaker 1: as though those sets of concerns are UH perhaps leading
Speaker 1: the police to pull back, perhaps contributing UH to violent
Speaker 1: crime and particularly low clearance rates that make it that
Speaker 1: much harder UH not only to police in area, but
Speaker 1: then once a crime has occurred, to make sure that
Speaker 1: the offender UH justifiably pays the punishment price. Eugene he
Speaker 1: announced the creation as Doug Mansion of a multi agency
Speaker 1: task force. And often task forces end up just making
Speaker 1: reports that don't go anywhere. What will this task force do? Well?
Speaker 1: I hope that the national police in crisis, somebody wants
Speaker 1: to do that job. Those are on the street or
Speaker 1: trying to get off. You can't recruit people at this point.
Speaker 1: You're throwing cameras into the mix, which you're going to
Speaker 1: make the cops extremely hesitant to do anything. And uh,
Speaker 1: the pressor mentioned Philadelphia. When I'm sitting today, a recent
Speaker 1: poem Philadelphia showed public safety is a concern, has catapulted
Speaker 1: to the top of people's concerns. Why is that? I
Speaker 1: think people over the neighborhoods know the cops are invisible
Speaker 1: and they're handcuffed and they're paralyzed. By the way you
Speaker 1: see this on the roadways. Also, you just don't see
Speaker 1: the cops out there anymore. So we need equilibrium, we
Speaker 1: need this echo. We need to stop this echo chamber
Speaker 1: of a right left conversation. We have to look at
Speaker 1: what works. But let's be very blunt here. The police
Speaker 1: has had un They've been kicked to the mercilessly in
Speaker 1: the last two years, the professionists is hurting badly. Um,
Speaker 1: rather than the Justice Department coming in, you know, even
Speaker 1: industry of lawyers, law professors, second guessers who don't do
Speaker 1: anything except answering the police. We need assistance to the
Speaker 1: police first, how we get them, second, how we educate them,
Speaker 1: and then how we empower them through the work that
Speaker 1: we need to do. Not the trip wire them and
Speaker 1: constutely threatened them, which has been the environment over the
Speaker 1: last two years. Again, every law school in America as
Speaker 1: one or two professors that spent all their time figuring
Speaker 1: out how not to protect the country. We haven't spent
Speaker 1: more time, then, well that's what they do. Well, it's
Speaker 1: not about terrorism, republic safety. We need affirmative strategies for
Speaker 1: protecting peas dou I'd like to give you a chance
Speaker 1: to respond to Eugene's comments about police officers pulling back
Speaker 1: on enforcement because of anxieties basically about videos and investigations
Speaker 1: and the public's fears. Yeah, and I I certainly think
Speaker 1: there is ample anecdotal evidence and even you know, some
Speaker 1: more systematic evidence that there is a kind of police
Speaker 1: pullback in some respects and in some cities that different
Speaker 1: communities are experiencing that in different kinds of ways. And
Speaker 1: that's itself where I think Eugene's point is is a
Speaker 1: sensible one that a new Attorney General is going to
Speaker 1: look at that and consider that and try to create
Speaker 1: a kind of balance in our conversations about policing and
Speaker 1: police activities. Uh though, Uh, there are still plenty of
Speaker 1: communities that feel over police or at least, you know,
Speaker 1: have a kind of adversary relationship with police encounters. That is,
Speaker 1: it'sself part of a broader problem that hopefully the Attorney
Speaker 1: General will not only be looking into, but be looking
Speaker 1: how to build healthier relationships between communities and police in
Speaker 1: order to ensure that the sets of problems oscillating one
Speaker 1: way or the other are not pervasive. And that's again
Speaker 1: where I'm hopeful that there are positive stories out there
Speaker 1: in different communities, positive stories in terms of continued reducing
Speaker 1: crime rates and good relationships between police and citizens that
Speaker 1: the any General task force will try to build upon, uh,
Speaker 1: to ensure those relationships are moving forward in a positive
Speaker 1: way in every community. Eugene jeff Session says he's going
Speaker 1: to back away from the civil rights investigations of police departments.
Speaker 1: Aren't those investigations intended to help the police work with
Speaker 1: the community. Is there a problem with those investigations? I
Speaker 1: think there is, I think and some of these departments
Speaker 1: are off the rails and need to be ranked in.
Speaker 1: But what we really need again as as as a
Speaker 1: blueprint for how do you get people that are the
Speaker 1: best mabrieties to go into police work and having you
Speaker 1: forster an environment where they're supporting when they're acting honorably.
Speaker 1: And we have this really devastating uh dialogue that has
Speaker 1: basically created in the minds of some people, again let
Speaker 1: by an elite, that there's nothing worse in America than policing,
Speaker 1: and that the criminal justice system is so totally flawed
Speaker 1: that it's better to let people pick up guns and
Speaker 1: shoot than to invoke the system. It's a fragile system,
Speaker 1: it's a creey system. But the notion that everybody being
Speaker 1: locked up is falsely accused, uh, you know, is a
Speaker 1: commonplace uh mindset. And we talk about what's not working.
Speaker 1: We've got cities all over the place that solved less
Speaker 1: than half of the shootings and homicides, meaning tons of
Speaker 1: people shoot and get away. Chicago can't solve eight percent
Speaker 1: of people should get away. No question about the fact
Speaker 1: that part of that is that it is the police
Speaker 1: are risk averse. They don't want to be an officer
Speaker 1: involved shooting. They don't want to go out at four
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning and take to somebody from his
Speaker 1: bed who's just shot somebody. And this is having a
Speaker 1: terrible impact down on the ground where people live, and
Speaker 1: they've been silenced. People have been silenced. This elite that
Speaker 1: has hijacked this conversation has created this notion that there's
Speaker 1: nothing worse than policing and the justice system and it's
Speaker 1: just falls and we need a correction. We don't need
Speaker 1: an ideological correction. We don't need a right wing uh
Speaker 1: you know, rerunning of a law and order campaign, but
Speaker 1: we don't sensible, smart policing. And some people have to
Speaker 1: be locked up. Let's be very clear. I don't know who.
Speaker 1: I don't know that anyone disagrees with you that that
Speaker 1: some people have to be locked up who are tried
Speaker 1: and convicted of crimes. Uh, Doug, do you see Jeff
Speaker 1: Sessions with his emphasis on on crime and on you know,
Speaker 1: cutting back on crime and violence. Do you see this
Speaker 1: as a hundred and eighty degree turn from the Justice
Speaker 1: Department over the last eight years. I'm not sure return,
Speaker 1: but it certainly is a significant turn, especially, you know,
Speaker 1: remembering a few years ago that Attorney General Holder, you know,
Speaker 1: talked about America locking up too many people for too long,
Speaker 1: for no good law enforcement reasons. That was his language.
Speaker 1: That was sort of piggybacking off of dis concern and
Speaker 1: concern that is statistically appropriate that America's still engaged in
Speaker 1: what's often called mass incarceration. We have the world's largest
Speaker 1: prison population, and even though there have been some slight declines, UH,
Speaker 1: there still are an extraordinary number of Americans locked behind bars,
Speaker 1: and that UH is something that the Holder and then
Speaker 1: Lynch Department of Justice was eager to be supportive of
Speaker 1: modest reforms to whereas I do think Attorney General Sessions
Speaker 1: UH is of the mind and it seems like Eugene
Speaker 1: kind of reflects this as well, that the problem isn't
Speaker 1: over incarceration, that the problem still maybe under incarceration, that
Speaker 1: there are still lots of bad people out there, and
Speaker 1: that they need to be put behind bars for public safety.
Speaker 1: And I think that view not only is one that
Speaker 1: is you know, more widely UH shared than maybe UH
Speaker 1: folks up here in the Ivory Tower realized. But it
Speaker 1: also is a function. I think of a view that
Speaker 1: all of the declines in crime over the last twenty
Speaker 1: years or so have been a product of a ramp
Speaker 1: up in incarceration. And though there's mixed evidence about the
Speaker 1: relationship between increased incarceration UH and reductions in crime, I
Speaker 1: think Attorney General Sessions UH kind of stands as an
Speaker 1: individual who largely is inclined to embrace them and who
Speaker 1: largely will say when we're seeing an upticking crime, the
Speaker 1: way to respond is to ramp back up enforcement mechanisms
Speaker 1: and the sets of policies and attitudes that largely drove
Speaker 1: the run up and incarceration rates over the last thirty years.
Speaker 1: In the first instance, we set thirty seconds. I'm going
Speaker 1: to ask you quickly, Eugene, if you if you have
Speaker 1: an answer for this. Is his idea about enforcing the
Speaker 1: marijuana laws realistic in light of the fact that Trump
Speaker 1: campaigned on leaving the issue up to the states, and
Speaker 1: more than half of the states have legalized medical uses
Speaker 1: of marijuana. Yeah, I think we should stop model in
Speaker 1: a lot of people locked up who shouldn't be, who
Speaker 1: are non violent, non attrect to others. But the con
Speaker 1: under me there are a lot of people who are
Speaker 1: not locked up. Should you. That's the problem. We've got
Speaker 1: violent people running amok, and you've got people don't after
Speaker 1: a blood press go at a low level non violent people.
Speaker 1: So an equilibrium balance and what really works in the neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: that's what we need to be focused on. Thank you
Speaker 1: both for being on Bloomberg Law. That's you, gen o'donald,
Speaker 1: Professor at John j College of Criminal Justice and Douglas Berman,
Speaker 1: Professor at Ohio State University Risk College of Law.