WEBVTT - De-radicalizing Extremists From QAnon to Jihad 0:00:03.200 --> 0:00:07.960 This is Bloombird Law with June Brusso from Bloombird Radio. 0:00:09.400 --> 0:00:16.040 He actually became Abdulah Haking Mohammed. He was no longer 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:22.400 Carlos Bledso. Martin Blesdoe's son, Carlos wants a bright, happy, 0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:26.520 go lucky hip hop fan, had fallen with Islamic radicals 0:00:26.520 --> 0:00:30.000 as a college student in Tennessee. His sister says they 0:00:30.040 --> 0:00:34.559 transformed him. They instill into your head that what you're 0:00:34.600 --> 0:00:38.040 doing is right, and you're doing it for your new family, 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:43.360 which is the extremists. When Carlos shot and killed a 0:00:43.479 --> 0:00:47.200 soldier at a US military recruiting office in two thousand nine, 0:00:47.520 --> 0:00:51.160 the family struggled with anger and grief. With nowhere to turn, 0:00:51.640 --> 0:00:55.040 they decided to help others who faced the same question 0:00:55.160 --> 0:00:57.720 they had. What do you do when a loved one 0:00:57.920 --> 0:01:01.880 subscribes to a radical idea of g whether it's jihad, 0:01:02.040 --> 0:01:06.400 white supremacy, q and on or something else. Parents for Peace. 0:01:06.480 --> 0:01:09.880 I feel like it's going to bring these families closer 0:01:10.680 --> 0:01:13.600 so that we can cry on each other showers, and 0:01:13.720 --> 0:01:18.280 for those that may be questioning what their child are doing, 0:01:19.000 --> 0:01:21.679 I think this will open their eyes. The demand for 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:24.639 the services of Parents for Peace has never been higher. 0:01:25.000 --> 0:01:28.360 Joining me is Bloomberg Legal reporter David Yaffee Bellini, who's 0:01:28.360 --> 0:01:31.360 written about the group. David start by telling us about 0:01:31.440 --> 0:01:33.880 the raid on the house of a young man who 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:37.240 also had been radicalized. This was back in November of 0:01:38.760 --> 0:01:41.559 and a mother in the southern US who were calling 0:01:41.600 --> 0:01:44.039 any and the story wakes up to the sound of 0:01:44.120 --> 0:01:46.760 pounding on her front door at the early hours the 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:49.639 morning and outside the house or a group of FBI 0:01:49.720 --> 0:01:52.960 adem and they've come looking for her teenage son who 0:01:52.960 --> 0:01:55.800 are calling Jack and the story and the reason is 0:01:55.840 --> 0:01:59.360 that Jack has been stuck into the world of Islamic 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:03.520 radical them online. He's talking in forums with supporters of 0:02:03.560 --> 0:02:08.200 the Atlantic State. He's discussing the possibility of attacks on 0:02:08.560 --> 0:02:11.440 national landmarks like the White House and the Washington Monument, 0:02:11.639 --> 0:02:14.160 and all of this has gotten the attention of the FBI, 0:02:14.440 --> 0:02:16.840 which shows up to read the house and see whether 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:19.639 there's any sign that Jack is actually preparing to launch 0:02:19.639 --> 0:02:23.200 a real terror attack. Was he charged. He was eventually 0:02:23.280 --> 0:02:26.480 charged in the juvenile court with making terrorist threats against 0:02:26.480 --> 0:02:29.720 the US and also with essentially obstructing investigation because he 0:02:29.800 --> 0:02:32.840 deleted a chat app from his phone after the FBI 0:02:33.120 --> 0:02:36.880 showed up, But ultimately he received a year of probation 0:02:36.960 --> 0:02:40.360 that says didn't really find any solid evidence that he 0:02:40.480 --> 0:02:42.920 was actually about to launch this sort of attack. And 0:02:42.960 --> 0:02:45.079 he was sixteen at the time, so, you know, luckily 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:47.880 for him, the case ended up in juvenile court. His 0:02:48.000 --> 0:02:52.320 mom said, people understand porn, they don't understand your kid 0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:55.600 is doing isis. But she was talking about this as 0:02:55.639 --> 0:02:59.359 an addiction. Yeah, So a lot of people who struggle 0:02:59.440 --> 0:03:03.200 with extraism and members of extremist groups compare the kind 0:03:03.240 --> 0:03:07.119 of psychological experiences being part of one of these movements 0:03:07.160 --> 0:03:09.760 to an addiction. You know, trying to break out of 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:13.320 it produces similar kind of lingering effects as if you're 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:16.560 breaking an addiction to drugs or alcohol, and this kind 0:03:16.600 --> 0:03:18.720 of thrill or the high get from being part of 0:03:18.760 --> 0:03:22.079 it is also akin to the sort of experiences being 0:03:22.120 --> 0:03:24.120 on drugs or being drunk or what have you. And 0:03:24.200 --> 0:03:26.560 so that's a way of thinking about this problem that 0:03:26.840 --> 0:03:29.919 anecdotal evidence supports, from which academics are beginning to study 0:03:29.919 --> 0:03:32.040 in a more systematic way to see if there are 0:03:32.560 --> 0:03:35.680 lessons of how you can combat this problem that stems 0:03:35.680 --> 0:03:38.760 from that recognition of their similarities with addiction, and the 0:03:38.840 --> 0:03:42.360 mom tried all sorts of things before she found Parents 0:03:42.400 --> 0:03:46.520 for Peace. Her son Jack is autistic, and people who 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:50.640 are autistic are sometimes susceptible to the type of predatory 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:53.480 recruitment that can lead to extremism, and so she saw 0:03:53.520 --> 0:03:55.640 all sorts of treatments for him. Him to a residential 0:03:55.680 --> 0:03:58.920 school for kids that behavioral problems. She introduced him to 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:02.680 a rotating asks of doctors and therapists to try to 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:06.520 treat this problem, and eventually she found a group called 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:10.000 Parents for Peace, which is a nonprofit that has been 0:04:10.040 --> 0:04:15.600 around and which specializes in helping people do radicalize, in 0:04:15.880 --> 0:04:18.799 that sort of lurring and kind of coaxing them away 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:23.120 from extremist groups. How would you describe their treatment method. 0:04:23.520 --> 0:04:27.159 It's difficult to describe precisely, but it's somewhere at the 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:32.919 intersection of addiction treatment, family counseling therapy, the kind of 0:04:32.960 --> 0:04:36.640 cult deprogramming efforts of the nineties seventies. It's this sort 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:39.960 of hybrid approach. A lot of it is about figuring 0:04:39.960 --> 0:04:42.760 out what the underlying problem is and trying to address that. 0:04:42.920 --> 0:04:45.120 You know, maybe this person is drawn to an extremist 0:04:45.160 --> 0:04:47.280 group because of their lonely Let's find a way for 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:49.760 them to make friends that they get that kind of 0:04:49.839 --> 0:04:53.560 sense of camaraderie from somewhere other than a dangerous extremist group. 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:57.240 Some of it is about coaching the family to respond 0:04:57.680 --> 0:05:01.320 to the loved ones extremism and productive way instead of 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:03.320 freaking out every time they show up you and on 0:05:03.440 --> 0:05:05.920 video on their phone. Try to ask them open and 0:05:06.040 --> 0:05:08.640 the questions about why they're drawn to that video, Try 0:05:08.720 --> 0:05:11.200 to understand them, show them loves and attention and trying 0:05:11.200 --> 0:05:14.560 to combat this underlying issue that might make them vulnerable 0:05:14.800 --> 0:05:18.560 to conspiracy theories. That's sort of thing and the ultimately 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:21.520 what this group will sometime to do is introduce someone 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:24.200 who's in an extremist group to a former extremists, somebody 0:05:24.240 --> 0:05:26.280 who's been in the group and left will kind of 0:05:26.320 --> 0:05:28.920 mentor them the friend of them and try to coach 0:05:29.000 --> 0:05:32.919 them away. The woman now in charge, Miriam Churchill, said, 0:05:33.240 --> 0:05:36.840 I thought this is really interesting. Never argue with extremists, 0:05:36.960 --> 0:05:39.960 don't react to angrily. It's tough not to try to 0:05:40.040 --> 0:05:43.560 argue someone out of something. Yeah, definitely, I mean, certainly 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:49.120 the temptation when somebody starts voicing horrible white supremacist ideas 0:05:49.440 --> 0:05:52.520 or kind of anti vactor sentiment is to fight back 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:55.440 and argue and prove them wrong. But what Miriam has 0:05:55.480 --> 0:05:57.640 found and hurt kind of working with families is that 0:05:57.920 --> 0:06:02.080 ultimately that's counterproductive. That feeling like you're under assault will 0:06:02.120 --> 0:06:04.320 just make you want to dig in even further and 0:06:04.360 --> 0:06:07.640 make you less likely to leave that type of conspiracy behind. 0:06:08.000 --> 0:06:09.680 And you know, that kind of makes sense on a 0:06:09.800 --> 0:06:12.440 sort of intuitive level, and so her advice is not 0:06:12.520 --> 0:06:15.400 to do that again, to try to kind of understand 0:06:15.600 --> 0:06:18.919 the underlying problems that might make you susceptible to believe 0:06:18.960 --> 0:06:20.880 in these things, and then to try to combat those. 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:26.039 So extremism is the drug of choice. And in Jack's case, 0:06:26.120 --> 0:06:30.359 he went from one extreme ideology to another. Yes, so 0:06:30.400 --> 0:06:33.320 this is something that the group parents or piece actually 0:06:33.360 --> 0:06:36.360 sees quite a lot, that people will switch from one 0:06:36.400 --> 0:06:38.960 ideology to the other. And you know, certainly when I 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:41.840 was beginning my reporting, you know, I didn't understand that 0:06:41.880 --> 0:06:43.920 at all. It seemed it didn't seem to make sense 0:06:43.960 --> 0:06:46.520 to me how somebody could go from being an Islamic 0:06:46.600 --> 0:06:49.560 radical one day to being a white supremacist the next day. 0:06:49.920 --> 0:06:52.200 It didn't fit with my understanding of how this works. 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:54.320 But you know, actually when you when you think about 0:06:54.320 --> 0:06:56.440 it more deeply, it does makes sense. You know, people 0:06:56.440 --> 0:06:59.520 are drawn to extremism often not because of the substance 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:02.440 of the idea oology, but because being a part of 0:07:02.480 --> 0:07:05.919 a group filled some sort of spiritual void and and 0:07:05.920 --> 0:07:08.719 and the substance of the ideology is almost secondary to 0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:12.480 the experience of subscribing to the ideology at all. And 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:15.560 so it makes sense that somebody might switch from from 0:07:15.600 --> 0:07:17.520 from one form to another, and that's something that the 0:07:17.560 --> 0:07:20.400 group seed a lot. So in Jack's kid, you know, 0:07:20.480 --> 0:07:23.000 with the help of the lessons his mom and some 0:07:23.080 --> 0:07:25.320 parents or peace and some of his kind of own 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:28.480 independent research videos he was watching online, he gradually starts 0:07:28.560 --> 0:07:32.760 drifting away from Islamic extremism, eventually kind of renounces the Kuran, 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:37.360 become a sort of urgently anti Muslim, which is its 0:07:37.360 --> 0:07:40.000 own sort of problem um. But then also at the 0:07:40.040 --> 0:07:44.640 same time begins embracing we're at least flirting with light 0:07:44.640 --> 0:07:47.800 wing extremism. Um. He gives ancestors who's gone to the 0:07:47.840 --> 0:07:50.680 Confederacy in the Civil War and starts wearing a Confederate 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:56.240 flag baseball cap everywhere. He decorates his room with Confederate flags. UM. 0:07:56.240 --> 0:07:58.200 And his mom, you know, doesn't think that he's becoming 0:07:58.240 --> 0:08:01.760 a white supremacist exactly, you know, not expressing animus towards 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:05.320 other races or anything like that, but he is sort 0:08:05.320 --> 0:08:07.520 of beginning to adopt some of the some of the 0:08:07.560 --> 0:08:11.320 trappings of white supremacy UM, and you know, at times 0:08:11.440 --> 0:08:15.960 or like express views that seems that seemed potentially problematic. 0:08:16.080 --> 0:08:18.640 At one point he uses the phrase white power and 0:08:18.680 --> 0:08:22.880 an argument with the sibling. Another time, his mom is 0:08:22.880 --> 0:08:25.440 sort of urging him to stop wearing his Confederate tap 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:27.320 out in public, and he says, no, no, this is 0:08:27.360 --> 0:08:30.080 my history, this is my heritage. So you can see 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:32.360 how that, you know, could easily, especially for someone with 0:08:32.520 --> 0:08:36.439 his history, turn into um, a real real problem. Do 0:08:36.520 --> 0:08:40.120 they call it deep programming or does that sound too cultish? Yeah, 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:43.000 parents are piece prefers. The term de radicalization, you know, 0:08:43.080 --> 0:08:46.520 deep programming. It's never a term that's really been precisely defined, 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:49.920 but it's definitely associated with those kind of extreme methods 0:08:49.920 --> 0:08:53.520 of in eighteen seventies when cult deprogrammers would literally kidnap 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:58.000 people who were in cults who subscribes to strange, exotic 0:08:58.200 --> 0:09:01.320 religious principles that their parents didn't understand. They would kidnap 0:09:01.360 --> 0:09:04.720 those people and deprived them of food until they were 0:09:04.760 --> 0:09:07.400 prepared to leave behind whatever that the cult was. And 0:09:07.440 --> 0:09:09.079 so a lot of the groups that are doing this 0:09:09.160 --> 0:09:11.240 type of work now want to stay away from that 0:09:11.400 --> 0:09:14.160 type of terminology, so they use still use the word 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:17.559 radicalization instead. Is there a lot of money in this, 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:20.960 So groups like Parents or Peace and another similar group 0:09:21.000 --> 0:09:24.320 called Life After Hate our nonprofits that don't charge money. 0:09:24.600 --> 0:09:27.719 They generate income through donations and government grants and those 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:30.640 works of means. But there's also a cadre of for 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:35.800 profit deprogrammers de radicalizers out there, and these tend to 0:09:35.840 --> 0:09:39.280 be the sort of final legacy of that nineteen seventies era. 0:09:39.400 --> 0:09:41.280 You know, these are people who are in cults and 0:09:41.360 --> 0:09:44.040 who then made careers out of deep programming, and they 0:09:44.040 --> 0:09:46.760 don't use the same extreme techniques at that period, but 0:09:47.200 --> 0:09:50.760 they charge family tens of thousands of dollars to conduct 0:09:50.800 --> 0:09:54.200 interventions to kind of insinuate themselves into the life of 0:09:54.200 --> 0:09:57.440 a cult member and then eventually reveal themselves as you 0:09:57.480 --> 0:09:59.839 know Ham as deprogrammer. And I'm here to take you 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:01.839 away from this, and I'm the persuade you why you 0:10:01.840 --> 0:10:05.120 should leave. And this is fraught with risks. Obviously there's 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:07.920 no guarantee of success. You could spend twenty thousand dollars 0:10:07.920 --> 0:10:10.280 one of these projects and then end up no better 0:10:10.280 --> 0:10:13.120 than when you started. Or I heard stories about the 0:10:13.240 --> 0:10:16.720 programs botching interventions, and so families leaves a lot of money, 0:10:16.720 --> 0:10:19.280 and then also their family member who they were trying 0:10:19.280 --> 0:10:22.400 to help is actually even more alienated ultimately, and so 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:24.760 there are all sorts of problems associated with this. So 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:28.079 Stephen Hassan is UM, you know, one of the most 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:32.160 well known kind of for profit deep programmers, the radicalizers. 0:10:32.200 --> 0:10:35.200 He was a member of the Unification Church, you know, 0:10:35.240 --> 0:10:38.720 back decades ago. You know, he considered a mooney UM. 0:10:39.080 --> 0:10:42.600 He ended up leaving, leaving that group and starting a 0:10:42.720 --> 0:10:45.840 career as a as a deep programmer UM. And so 0:10:45.920 --> 0:10:48.240 he charged his five thousand dollars a day to work 0:10:48.280 --> 0:10:50.760 with families who are trying to extract somebody from an 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:54.400 extremist group or from you know, a cult. UM. He's 0:10:54.440 --> 0:10:57.559 recently kind of pivoted more from helping cult members to 0:10:57.640 --> 0:11:00.079 helping people who are kind of stuck down the you 0:11:00.160 --> 0:11:02.800 and on rabbit hole. Um. He published a book recently 0:11:02.840 --> 0:11:05.760 called The Cult of Trump. Um, he's the sort of 0:11:05.760 --> 0:11:08.280 guy who's on TB all the time talking about how, 0:11:08.760 --> 0:11:11.200 you know, Trump supporters are brainwashed and that sort of thing. 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:14.600 He's basically trafficking in kind of theories about how this 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:18.720 works that are disputed by academics and then charging huge 0:11:18.720 --> 0:11:21.320 amounts of money to try to help people. I mean, 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:24.800 there are certainly, you know, records of that kind of 0:11:24.840 --> 0:11:28.320 successful cases that that he's worked on. But UM, it's 0:11:28.320 --> 0:11:32.400 definitely a different, you know, costlier approach than what what 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:38.160 other groups are offered. Is that extreme cult deep programming 0:11:38.520 --> 0:11:42.880 happening anymore. You know, there may be kind of anecdotal 0:11:42.920 --> 0:11:45.679 examples of that happening occasionally now, but that's it's not 0:11:45.720 --> 0:11:47.960 happening at anywhere near at the level that it did 0:11:48.000 --> 0:11:50.000 in the seventies. And that's partly because there were legal 0:11:50.000 --> 0:11:52.040 repercussions for the people who were doing this. There were 0:11:52.040 --> 0:11:56.200 criminal prosecutions, there were civil suits, and and that you know, 0:11:56.280 --> 0:11:59.320 really kind of changed how this works. Um. And you 0:11:59.360 --> 0:12:02.400 know it's happening, it's happening much less often, if at all, anymore. 0:12:02.480 --> 0:12:04.200 When when and when you talk to people who are 0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:06.960 in the kind of culty programming space now, they don't say, oh, 0:12:07.000 --> 0:12:09.800 we would never do anything like that. So as far 0:12:09.920 --> 0:12:13.840 as groups that are free of charge, how many are 0:12:13.840 --> 0:12:17.320 they're out there? It's really a handful, you know. I 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:18.920 know of two or three off the top and I 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:20.920 have there. Maybe there may be others, but it's a 0:12:21.040 --> 0:12:24.520 very kind of small and and and still sort of 0:12:24.559 --> 0:12:27.960 growing community. Um. This sort of work is really pioneered 0:12:27.960 --> 0:12:30.360 in Europe. In the late nineties, there was an effort 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:34.400 in Norway to help right wing extremeists leave these sorts 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:37.199 of groups, and it only really these sorts of efforts 0:12:37.240 --> 0:12:39.079 only really a game traction and that you asked over 0:12:39.120 --> 0:12:41.960 the last decade. So we're sort of behind where we're 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:46.640 Europe is on this type of ward, and some defendants 0:12:46.880 --> 0:12:51.040 charged in the January six riots are using this idea 0:12:51.240 --> 0:12:55.080 of de radicalization at sentencing to try to get a 0:12:55.080 --> 0:12:58.760 more lenient sentence. I mean, this is a fascinating aspect 0:12:58.800 --> 0:13:00.880 of this type of work. What you're seeing is that 0:13:00.960 --> 0:13:06.400 people who are facing prison sentences because of extremist activity 0:13:06.559 --> 0:13:08.600 are able to say to judges, look, I'm trying to 0:13:08.640 --> 0:13:11.120 get you outequalise I'm working with a group like Parents 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:14.480 for Peace, or I'm re educating myself and reading all 0:13:14.520 --> 0:13:17.720 sorts of literature about racial inequality in America sentance and 0:13:18.080 --> 0:13:21.040 that shows that I deserve a more lenient sentence. It's 0:13:21.080 --> 0:13:23.760 really similar to someone who's charged with drunk driving who 0:13:23.840 --> 0:13:26.360 starts going to a meetings and said, so ject, look, 0:13:26.360 --> 0:13:28.880 I'm trying to get treatment. Give me a lenient sentence 0:13:28.920 --> 0:13:31.360 and proving to you that if I'm allowed to return 0:13:31.400 --> 0:13:33.880 to society all behave myself and won't be a threat 0:13:33.880 --> 0:13:35.880 to other people. Now, of course there's a risk here. 0:13:35.920 --> 0:13:39.559 There's a risk of dishonesty and manipulation and people abusing 0:13:39.600 --> 0:13:41.880 these sorts of resources, and you know, that's something that 0:13:41.880 --> 0:13:43.319 the courts are going to have to kind of figure 0:13:43.360 --> 0:13:46.480 out how to sort of protect. And has Parents for 0:13:46.600 --> 0:13:49.920 Peace been involved in any of these sentencings. The one 0:13:49.960 --> 0:13:51.960 case that we're we've seen this play out kind of 0:13:51.960 --> 0:13:54.960 most obviously is in Michigan. Tye Garbon, who was one 0:13:55.000 --> 0:13:57.640 of the right wing extreamists who was charged with the 0:13:57.679 --> 0:14:00.720 Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot back in twenty twenty. He was 0:14:00.760 --> 0:14:04.280 the first of that group of conspirators to plead guilty, 0:14:04.600 --> 0:14:07.240 and his lawyers reached out to Parents for Peace and 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:10.240 he spoke with the organization over zoom and had various 0:14:10.240 --> 0:14:12.520 meetings with them talking about his personal history. They were 0:14:12.559 --> 0:14:14.640 trying to kind of help him get to a place 0:14:14.679 --> 0:14:17.880 where he's not further radicalized in prison. And then during 0:14:17.960 --> 0:14:20.840 his sentencing, his lawyers brought this up repeatedly and argued 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:22.960 to the judge that he deserved more leading a sentence. 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:27.320 And it's difficult to pinpoint where that outreach fit into 0:14:27.440 --> 0:14:29.840 the broader picture of his case, but he did end 0:14:29.880 --> 0:14:33.680 up receiving a sentence that was significantly below the maximum 0:14:33.680 --> 0:14:35.760 possible that he could have received. It was also because 0:14:35.800 --> 0:14:37.720 he was the first in this group to police guilty. 0:14:37.760 --> 0:14:40.160 He was cooperating that type of thing, but it certainly 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:42.600 didn't hurt that he was speaking the sort of help. 0:14:42.960 --> 0:14:46.000 Is there any study being done to back up that 0:14:46.160 --> 0:14:50.400 this is a process that works long term? So there's 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:53.400 some data from European efforts that suggests that it works 0:14:53.440 --> 0:14:56.520 pretty well in terms of the work that parents pieces doing. 0:14:56.800 --> 0:14:59.360 There's just way less data on that, and it's a 0:14:59.400 --> 0:15:02.640 real quest and mark they're certainly anecdotal examples of this working, 0:15:02.640 --> 0:15:05.760 But can they show systematically that they have refined an 0:15:05.760 --> 0:15:08.520 approach that really addresses this issue in a meaningful way. 0:15:08.800 --> 0:15:12.280 And they're working with researchers at Harvard and Boston University 0:15:12.280 --> 0:15:15.120 who are just now beginning to work. Is like tracking 0:15:15.160 --> 0:15:17.800 cases over the long term, and that means not just 0:15:18.080 --> 0:15:21.280 does this person leave the extremist group and reject terrorism 0:15:21.320 --> 0:15:23.680 or white supremacy or whatever two months later, it's like 0:15:23.720 --> 0:15:25.680 where are they two years later? Where are they four 0:15:25.760 --> 0:15:28.320 years later? You know, how does their life change after 0:15:28.360 --> 0:15:31.080 the group's intervention. That's work they'll take a really long 0:15:31.120 --> 0:15:33.960 time to do and it's only only really starting now. 0:15:34.400 --> 0:15:38.320 How much call is there for this type of intervention. 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:40.840 I think there's a huge amount of demand that Parents 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:44.320 or Peace saw threefold increase and calls to its national 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:47.280 hotline during the pandemic from before the pandemic. You know, 0:15:47.320 --> 0:15:49.720 it's people stay at home, are spending more time online, 0:15:49.760 --> 0:15:52.040 you know, all this sorts of phenomena that we're familiar with. 0:15:52.240 --> 0:15:55.800 And after January six, you're also seeing assert in family 0:15:55.960 --> 0:15:59.440 seeking treatments for loved ones who are being stuck down 0:15:59.440 --> 0:16:02.200 these rabbits. So it's certainly something that's in demand. There's 0:16:02.200 --> 0:16:04.680 no question that extremism is a big problem in the 0:16:04.720 --> 0:16:07.040 modern US and that we need to figure out a 0:16:07.040 --> 0:16:09.400 way to deal with it. And a lot of attention 0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:12.400 has focused on how do we get social media companies 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:15.720 to stop spreading this information that leads to extremism, and 0:16:15.720 --> 0:16:17.720 that's certainly a big problem and one that needs to 0:16:17.760 --> 0:16:19.640 be addressed. But what these groups are trying to do 0:16:19.760 --> 0:16:22.640 is address a different sort of problem, which is, Okay, 0:16:22.720 --> 0:16:25.400 you've got a family member who is already an extremist. 0:16:25.440 --> 0:16:27.640 What do you do then? And that's a complicated question. 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:40.200 Thanks David. That's David Yaffie Bellani, Bloomberg Legal reporter. The 0:16:40.280 --> 0:16:44.640 demands for justice and police accountability during the demonstrations following 0:16:44.640 --> 0:16:49.360 George Floyd's murder revived questions about the controversial doctrine of 0:16:49.440 --> 0:16:53.400 qualified immunity, But this week the Supreme Court sided with 0:16:53.480 --> 0:16:56.720 police in a pair of cases alleging excessive force by 0:16:56.840 --> 0:17:01.200 officers in California and Oklahoma. The Justice has ruled unanimously 0:17:01.600 --> 0:17:05.400 that the officers were protected by qualified immunity and could 0:17:05.440 --> 0:17:09.000 not be sued because previous case law hadn't given them 0:17:09.040 --> 0:17:13.320 clear guidance that their conduct violated the constitution. Joining me 0:17:13.359 --> 0:17:17.000 as an expert on qualified immunity, Joanna Schwartz, a professor 0:17:17.040 --> 0:17:19.639 at u c l A Law School, Joanna explain what 0:17:19.760 --> 0:17:24.480 qualified immunity is. So. Qualified immunity is a legal defense 0:17:24.560 --> 0:17:29.040 in civil cases, and the defense means that a police 0:17:29.080 --> 0:17:33.720 officer or other government official who has violated the Constitution 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:39.080 is protected from being sued unless there's clearly established law 0:17:39.400 --> 0:17:44.120 showing that what they did was unconstitutional. And the Supreme 0:17:44.119 --> 0:17:48.840 Court in recent years has offered more and more restrictive 0:17:49.119 --> 0:17:51.680 descriptions of what it means to clearly establish the law, 0:17:51.840 --> 0:17:54.280 so that they've now really sent a message that you 0:17:54.359 --> 0:17:58.240 need a prior court case where the almost exact same 0:17:58.280 --> 0:18:02.160 thing happened before and ruled unconstitutional in order to clearly 0:18:02.240 --> 0:18:07.720 establish the law. In both cases, the justices overturned lower 0:18:07.760 --> 0:18:11.239 court decisions that went against the officers. Can you just 0:18:11.240 --> 0:18:13.720 tell us a little bit about the cases. One was 0:18:13.800 --> 0:18:16.320 from the Ninth Circuit, one was from the Tenth Circuit. 0:18:16.400 --> 0:18:20.160 They were both cases where police were called about some 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:24.000 domestic incident. You know the fact in a slightly difference 0:18:24.040 --> 0:18:26.879 in the case out of the Ninth Circuit, officers in 0:18:27.160 --> 0:18:31.800 arresting person put them down on the ground and put 0:18:31.880 --> 0:18:35.600 their knee on the person's back, albeit briefly. And in 0:18:35.640 --> 0:18:38.800 the case out of the Tenth Circuit, the man was 0:18:39.400 --> 0:18:44.120 near his garage the police arrived, and it sounds like 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:48.280 the man sort of stepped back into his garage, had 0:18:48.320 --> 0:18:51.960 a hammer that he swung sort of like a baseball bat, 0:18:52.000 --> 0:18:55.480 it says in the opinion, several feet away from the officers, 0:18:55.840 --> 0:18:59.000 and then the officers shot him. The Court said, it's 0:18:59.040 --> 0:19:03.320 not enough that rule be suggested by then existing precedent. 0:19:03.920 --> 0:19:07.080 The rules contours must be so well defined that it's 0:19:07.080 --> 0:19:10.280 clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful 0:19:10.320 --> 0:19:14.639 in the situation he confronted. Our officers really aware of 0:19:14.680 --> 0:19:18.800 what these court cases say, or is this standard sort 0:19:18.840 --> 0:19:22.480 of a ruse on the Court's part. It's a terrific question. 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:24.800 I think the shortest answer is it is a bit 0:19:24.840 --> 0:19:28.840 of a ruse. When the Supreme Court explains why there 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:31.960 needs to be a prior court decision with nearly identical fact, 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:35.960 they talk about notice that the officer needs to be unnoticed, 0:19:36.080 --> 0:19:39.439 that the contours of the constitution are hazy and we 0:19:39.560 --> 0:19:43.399 need a clear articulation of what is unconstitutional for an 0:19:43.440 --> 0:19:46.719 officer to be unnoticed. But you are absolutely right. Officers 0:19:46.880 --> 0:19:50.600 are not educated about the fact and holdings of the 0:19:50.640 --> 0:19:53.560 court decisions that the Supreme Court says are necessary to 0:19:53.560 --> 0:19:56.159 clearly establish the law. And I actually, in an article 0:19:56.240 --> 0:19:59.920 that was published earlier this year, studied hundreds of policy 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:04.120 and trainings for California law enforcement agencies about the use 0:20:04.160 --> 0:20:06.520 of force, which is the issue that is the basis 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:10.439 for these two decisions. And what I found was officers 0:20:10.480 --> 0:20:14.280 are trained about the sort of high level framework that 0:20:14.359 --> 0:20:17.560 the Supreme Court articulated in a case called Grand versus 0:20:17.680 --> 0:20:21.359 connor about the reasonableness of force depending on the totality 0:20:21.400 --> 0:20:25.280 of circumstances given the perspective of the officer at the time. 0:20:25.640 --> 0:20:28.280 But they are not trained about the facts and holdings 0:20:28.320 --> 0:20:31.159 of the court decisions that the Supreme Court says are 0:20:31.240 --> 0:20:34.280 necessary to clearly establish the law. Instead, they're taught those 0:20:34.280 --> 0:20:36.720 broad principles and taught how to apply them with various 0:20:36.800 --> 0:20:39.920 hypotheticals that are not drawn some court cases. And if 0:20:39.960 --> 0:20:42.400 you think for a moment about what it would mean 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:48.679 for officers actually to rely upon these prior decisions, it's fantastical. 0:20:49.040 --> 0:20:52.280 There are hundreds or thousands of opinions that could clearly 0:20:52.359 --> 0:20:54.720 establish the law just for use of force cases. And 0:20:54.760 --> 0:20:57.159 then there's all sorts of other things that police officers 0:20:57.160 --> 0:21:00.280 and other government officials do that also have our own 0:21:00.280 --> 0:21:03.719 bodies of case laws. To learn about those cases. You know, 0:21:03.880 --> 0:21:07.240 in California, you get I think it's twenty four hours 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:10.399 every two years of training learning about those cases. Spending 0:21:10.400 --> 0:21:12.680 just five minutes on those cases would take up all 0:21:12.800 --> 0:21:15.879 of the training hours that police officers currently have. And 0:21:15.920 --> 0:21:19.440 then you have to expect that officers would actually retain 0:21:19.680 --> 0:21:23.280 and remember the fact and holdings of those cases, and then, 0:21:23.400 --> 0:21:26.720 in the split second that they are required to make 0:21:26.720 --> 0:21:29.240 the kinds of decisions that sometimes lead to use as 0:21:29.280 --> 0:21:33.919 of force, be able to distinguish between the precise facts 0:21:34.240 --> 0:21:39.280 in these various cases. It simply is fantastical. It is implausible. 0:21:39.320 --> 0:21:42.720 It makes no sense at all as a standard, and 0:21:42.760 --> 0:21:46.119 that is justified by notice goals. And so then what 0:21:46.280 --> 0:21:49.600 is the purpose? I returned to where you started with 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:51.440 your question. It feels like a bit of a route. 0:21:51.800 --> 0:21:54.840 And in the case here involving the California Police officer, 0:21:55.359 --> 0:21:59.040 the Ninth Circuit said that existing precedent did put the 0:21:59.080 --> 0:22:02.199 officer on no notice. And in the case involving the 0:22:02.200 --> 0:22:06.880 Oklahoma police officers, the ten Circuit pointed to several cases 0:22:06.920 --> 0:22:10.919 that it said clearly established that the conduct was unlawful. 0:22:11.359 --> 0:22:14.760