Excerpts
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss protests in Chicago against the killing of Laquan McDonald and lethal force by police, how the Paris attacks have affected the fight against the Islamic State, as well as recent remarks by Donald Trump on 9/11 and whether Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are seeing an opening.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): And that brings us to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
Gentlemen, welcome.
And I do want to get to the presidential campaign in just a moment, but, Mark, I want to start with a story that we reported earlier this evening, the protests in Chicago about the shooting last year of a young black teenager by a white Chicago policeman who’s now been charged with murder.
What does this and these other police shootings we have seen over the past year say about efforts to heal the relationship between police and the black communities?
MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated columnist: Well, it’s — it’s a continuing challenge and a terrible tragedy personally, Judy, in this case, I mean, where we have this — that age-old question, who will protect the people when the police violate the law?
And from every indication here, you have all the evidence pointing to a police officer essentially executing a 17-year-old boy, and the authorities sitting on it for 400 days, the prosecuting attorney in not — not going forward.
And, to me, beyond the tragedy, the other story you reported on was that of Tyshawn Lee, the 9-year-old — a 9-year-old who was killed as a — basically a hostage, as retribution in a gang fight within the community. There is no tougher job in America than being a cop on the beat in a major city in this country, big and brawling.
And for good cops, what happened in Chicago, with Laquan McDonald’s execution — and that’s I think all you can call it — it makes the job of the cop on the beat, the overwhelming of whom are good, that much tougher.
JUDY WOODRUFF: David, you know, we keep reporting on these incidents and we think maybe we have turned a corner, but then they just seem to keep happening.
DAVID BROOKS, New York Times: Yes. We need structural change.
Listen, there are — since 2007, there have been 400 police shootings in Chicago, and only one of them has been ruled unjustified.
MARK SHIELDS: That’s right.
DAVID BROOKS: That’s just not credible.
And so you have got to have some structural changes. And, listen, I understand why there has to be loyalty within the police force, basically loyalty within the criminal justice system. I was a police reporter in Chicago at a time when it was way more violent even than it is right now.
And it’s tough. And they want to protect each other. And I get that. And the situations are often murky. But you have to build structures so that, when there is something that goes wrong, that there actually is really a prosecutorial force somewhere within the system looking at the system from a hostile eye and saying, did something really bad happen here?
And if they’re exonerating 99.8 percent of the cops who are shooting people, that’s probably not right. And so there has to be a structure to really investigate these situations. And, you know, I have been moving on the cop cam issue.
When these things first started happening, I was sort of ambivalent about cop cams, because I think they will affect the civil-police relationship if everyone knows everything is being filmed. But the evidence is mounting that these cameras — and we happened to have a dashboard cam in this case — the evidence is mounting these are effective, and maybe cops should be wearing cameras everywhere.
I have to disagree with David Books on LEOs wanting 'to protect each other.' It is the old 'Blue Shield' that wants to protect officers who break the law, and has nothing to do with loyalty.
JUDY WOODRUFF: David, I want to turn to, this Friday, today, two weeks after the horrible shootings in Paris, the terrorist attacks, is there a sense that these efforts, you know, whether it’s President Hollande of France, President Obama, anyone else, that the efforts to put together some kind of effective coalition, effort to fight ISIS is any stronger today as a result of what happened?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, we have got a little clarity.
It’s the — what’s the definition of an effective coalition? To me, the definition of an effective coalition doesn’t involve Vladimir Putin or the Russians, because they want to keep Assad, and most of the rest of the world wants to get rid of Assad, knowing that Assad is the key source of the problem here. He’s the one who has created the instability and the genocide that leads the Sunnis to radicalize and embrace ISIS.
And so there was this myth, this shimmering of early days that we were going to have a global alliance including Putin. And, at least according to the words coming of the Kremlin today and according to the controversy that Russia is having with Turkey, that grand dream, which was a bad dream, is falling apart.
Whether we can create a Western alliance with the Gulf states to defeat ISIS another matter. But the key to it is getting the Sunnis. We don’t have the boots on the ground. We’re not going to put the boots on the ground. If the reasonable Sunnis don’t revolt against ISIS, then nothing will happen.
And they are not going to do it as long as Assad is really raining genocide down upon them. So, understanding the basic logic of the situation, the complex logic of the situation, is really the key, I think.
No comments:
Post a Comment