SUMMARY: Since the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School, there's been an increased police presence at schools. But that presence has also sparked concerns. According to a recent analysis, black students are more likely to be arrested on campus than their white counterparts. Special correspondent Kavitha Cardoza of Education Week reports on how the Saint Paul public schools are changing their approach.
KAVITHA CARDOZA, Special correspondent: Minnesota — it's known for the Vikings, Lake Wobegon, and being nice.
But, in the past year, a series of violent interactions within the St. Paul school system has taken center stage, school fights, teacher assaults, and one incident where a visiting student was arrested for trespassing, all caught on cell phones and, of course, widely shared on social media.
Teachers threatened to strike, the superintendent was fired, and more than 100 students walked out in protest.
Makkah Abdur Salaam is a senior.
MAKKAH ABDUR SALAAM, Student:The truth is, I don't feel safe around police. Like, it's point blank, period.
KAVITHA CARDOZA: Students like Saffiyah Al'Aziz Muhammed say rocky police-civilian relations have filtered down to schools all over the country.
SAFFIYAH AL'AZIZ MOHAMMED, Student:Us seeing all this police brutality in the media, and then going to school, and then your interactions with school police aren't good, it's kind of, like, traumatizing a little bit.
KAVITHA CARDOZA: Nationwide, there were nearly 70,000 arrests during the 2013 school year. And, in most states, black students are far more likely to be arrested, according to an analysis of federal data by the Education Week Research Center.
One reason might be that they are far more likely to be in schools with police officers.
Laura Olson is trying to change the relationship between students and police officers in St. Paul schools.
LAURA OLSON, Saint Paul Public Schools:If students don't feel safe when they come to school, they're not going to be in a position to learn.
KAVITHA CARDOZA: One of the first things she did? Change the uniforms.
Some students expressed that they felt uncomfortable, kind of that paramilitary look. So, over the summer, instead of the hard military-style blue and metal badge, they moved to a more soft blue polo shirt with stitched-on badge.
Officers, known as School Resource Officers, are still armed and carry Tasers, but Olson hopes this softer look makes them more approachable.
Another change? Clarify when SRO's should step in and when should they step aside.
SUMMARY: In September 1971, Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York became the site of a bloody uprising that would shock the nation. Over several days, some 1,300 inmates seized parts of the prison, demanding better living conditions. Heather Ann Thompson documents the untold story in her new book, “Blood in the Water,” and joins Jeffrey Brown to discuss the truth about the riot's violent end.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): September, 1971, Attica Prison in Upstate New York became the site of a bloody prison clash that would shock the nation. Over several chaotic days, some 1,300 inmates seized parts of the prison and demanded better living conditions.
ELLIOT ‘L.D.' BARKLEY (prisoner): We are men! We are not beasts and we do not intend to be driven or beaten as such!
JEFFREY BROWN:In the initial takeover a guard was killed. Inmates held about 40 prison employees as hostages, negotiating with the state of New York, and bringing in outside counsel including Attorney William Kunstler. Governor Nelson Rockefeller refused a face to face visit, talks soon disintegrated. And on September 13th, hundreds of armed troopers stormed the prison to retake control.
MAN: The instructions is your weapon is not to be taken or you to be taken.
JEFFREY BROWN: Twenty-nine inmates and ten hostages were killed in the takeover, scores more injured.
The story, much of it long kept hidden from view, is told in the new book “Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising o f 1971 and Its Legacy.”
Author Heather Ann Thompson is a historian at the University of Michigan.
Now, you argue there are two stories to tell. One is the “what happened”, one is the aftermath. Start with the “what happened.” What did the period leading up to the riot, what led to it?
HEATHER ANN THOMPSON, Author, “Blood in the Water”:Well, prisons in 1971, much like today, were these out of sight, out of mind places where people were treated very badly, and the guys inside worked through the system first to try get their conditions improved — again, very basic things, enough food to eat, sufficient sanitary supplies — and when that really fails, frustration mounts.
Ultimately, they erupt in a protest, and the book tells that story. It's a remarkable story of men from very different backgrounds who stand together, negotiate with the state of New York, with the help of observers.
JEFFREY BROWN: The riots were not planned.
HEATHER ANN THOMPSON:No, not at all. It actually begins in a quite unexpected clash between prisoners and guards that morphed into something much more organized. The guys elect representatives from the cell block to speak for them, they begin negotiating to the state for better conditions and, for four days, the world watches as the media is there to see how this thing is going to unfold.
SUMMARY: Chicago’s Independent Police Review Board today released scores of video and audio recordings from police-involved shootings and some of them are pretty shocking. The release is part of sweeping police reforms instituted by Mayor Rahm Emanuel after the shooting death of Laquan McDonald, a young black man, by a white officer. Jeffrey Brown talks to Chicago Police Board chair Lori Lightfoot.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):It’s a stunning release for its sheer size and scope. Today, Chicago’s Independent Police Review Board released scores of recordings related to 101 cases involving officer-related shootings and other incidents in which civilians were injured or killed.
The videos came from dashboard cameras and other sources. They involve alleged misconduct in cases that remain under investigation. In one video, an unarmed man was shot by police after he allegedly caused a disturbance on a bus and struck a driver.
Another, shot on a cell phone, shows police hitting someone after arriving at a scene where there was open alcohol.
Today, Sharon Fairley, chief administrator of the review authority, said the release is part of an effort to make the department more open.
SHARON FAIRLEY, Independent Police Review Authority: These past few months, as the city has struggled with so many questions about policing and about police accountability, it has been clear that we all agree that there’s a lack of trust and that increased transparency is essential to rebuilding that trust.
JEFFREY BROWN: Fairley added, though, that the videos only show so much.
SHARON FAIRLEY: It’s really important for you to keep in mind that these materials may not convey all of the facts and considerations that are relevant to an investigation of an officer’s conduct.
JEFFREY BROWN: For its part, the police union called today’s release of the videos irresponsible.
Anger and frustration with the police department came to a head last year after a video was released showing a white officer killing black teenager Laquan McDonald. The event occurred in 2014.
Facing a firestorm, Mayor Rahm Emanuel sacked the police superintendent, replacing him with a new chief, veteran Eddie Johnson.
And let’s go to Chicago for reactions to these videos from Lori Lightfoot, former chair of the city’s Police Accountability Task Force. It was formed by the mayor after criticism of the department and his office. She’s now president of the Chicago Police Board, an independent civilian group appointed by the mayor.
SUMMARY: As Brazil prepares for its first Olympic Games, violence is flaring in the notorious favelas surrounding Rio de Janeiro. While a paramilitary policing initiative known as “pacification” stemmed the tide of drugs and crime for a while, economic downturn and widespread police brutality have once again turned the slum districts into war zones. Special correspondent Lulu Garcia-Navarro of NPR reports.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): It's just over two months until the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
For the host country, Brazil, it's been a troubled journey. The Zika virus, corruption scandals, and an economic and political meltdown have all had an impact. But for many residents, the most worrying development is a spike in crime across Rio and what happens after the athletes go home.
“NewsHour” producer Jon Gerberg teamed up with NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro, and they report from the shantytowns, or favelas, of Rio de Janeiro.
And a warning: Some of the images are disturbing.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO (NPR): The image of glamorous Rio de Janeiro most people know; world-famous beaches like Copacabana, a draw for tourists and residents alike.
But just behind the high-rises and hotels lies another world. These are two impoverished communities called Babilonia and Chapeu Mangueira. They are at the heart of a bold policing experiment that started in 2008. It's called pacification.
It introduced community-based police units to many favelas that are close to tourist areas, its aim, to push out the violent drug gangs that operated here in advance of Brazil's debut on the world stage with the 2014 World Cup and, in two months' time, the Olympics.
Babilonia and Chapeu Mangueira together became the poster children of Rio's transformation. Crime dropped. New businesses opened, catering to tourists. Police would walk around with their weapons holstered. Dignitaries like U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and media like me were taken here to show off the project's success.
But that success is now under threat. Pacification is in crisis. The first time I came to this favela three years ago, it was safe. It was known as the Disneyland favela. This time, residents refusing to talk to us because they have been threatened by drug traffickers. And the only way we can come is with heavily armed police.
These pacification units, known as UPPs, now walk around ready for battle. Two rival gangs are violently fighting for control in this area, and police are struggling. At the crest of the favelas, Commander Paulo Berbat tells me the gangs use these jungle paths to ferry weapons and drugs in and out.
He told me that, in March, the battle for control over these routes turned deadly.
So, he's saying that, just up here in this area, members of a rival gang from a different community used the cover of the forest to try and invade this community and take it over. There was an intense confrontation between the drug gang that controls this community, and three of the drug traffickers were killed.
Businesses that had flourished, attracting foreigners, are now reporting a 50 percent drop in revenue. Even though no visitors have been harmed in Babilonia and Chapeu Mangueira, tourists are choosing to stay away. It's a shocking turnaround for the residents here.
Among them is Rodrigo da Silva. He sells food to make a living on the beaches just near his home in Chapeu Mangueira. He had hoped that the Olympics and pacification would provide new opportunities, so he opened a hostel, advertised on Airbnb, but clients today are scarce
RODRIGO DA SILVA, Favela Resident (through interpreter):Our business has decreased. We had much higher expectations in terms of hosting people throughout the Olympics. If the situation had improved, maybe I wouldn't still have to work here on the beach.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO: Concerned about gang pressure, da Silva only agreed to meet us outside his favela.
RODRIGO DA SILVA (through interpreter): If you talk too much, it ends badly. Here's the deal: You do not mess with their business. I don't mess with their stuff and they don't mess with mine. Everyone wins, in a way.
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.
SUMMARY: After recurring instances of excessive force by Cleveland’s police force, the Department of Justice and city officials announced a sweeping legal agreement that rewrites the rules for the police department. Gwen Ifill learns more about the efforts to rebuild relations between police and the city from Ronnie Dunn of Cleveland State University.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): The Department of Justice and the city of Cleveland announced a sweeping legal settlement today that rewrites the rules for the city’s police department after recurring instances of the use of excessive force.
The U.S. attorney, the city police chief and Cleveland’s mayor all praised the agreement at a joint news conference.
STEVEN DETTELBACH, U.S. Attorney, Northern District of Ohio: Compliance with this agreement, which means taking on truly systemic change, is going to be — and I say this as a Clevelander — it’s going to be hard work.
CALVIN WILLIAMS, Chief, Cleveland Division of Police: We talked a lot about the nuts and bolts of this, but what it really comes down to is, we have to, I have to, as chief, make sure that community policing philosophy is part of the DNA of the Cleveland Division of Police. And that’s what I intend to do.
MAYOR FRANK JACKSON, Cleveland: I have expressed throughout this my major issue was twofold, one, that it didn’t go far enough, and, two, that we wanted to have substantive, real reform that was sustainable, not just, as the U.S. attorney said, some pretense of reform. So this gives us the tools.
GWEN IFILL: For more on what it took to get to this agreement, and what happens next, I’m joined by Ronnie Dunn, associate professor of urban studies at Cleveland State University. He also serves on the Ohio Task Force on Community-Police Relations.
SUMMARY: All week long, many young people from the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood and other inner city Baltimore communities have been protesting the death of Freddie Gray at the hands of police. Natasha Pratt-Harris, an associate professor of criminal justice and sociology at Morgan State University in Baltimore, joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss relations with police.
HARI SREENIVASAN, PBS NEWSHOUR WEEKEND ANCHOR: Of course, all week long, we’ve seen many young people from Sandtown-Winchester, other inner city Baltimore communities, along with many other concerned citizens, protesting the death of Freddie Gray at the hands of police.
For a look at relations with the police, we are joined now by Natasha Pratt-Harris, a PhD, and associate professor of criminal justice and sociology at Morgan State University in Baltimore.
So, Professor, I want to play you a clip we came across this week. It’s of a young man talking about how he believes police treat men of color as suspects.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It hurts. It really hurts. You know, when you come out in the morning and you just can’t come out, take deep breath and take a walk.
You can’t even take a walk, because when you do, half of the times they are staring at you, they are looking at you. You got something planned in their minds.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARI SREENIVASAN: Is that a fair description about what’s happening?
NATASHA PRATT-HARRIS, MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY: I would just say he’s speaking his truth.
I actually grew up in the city of Baltimore, attended public schools. I actually teach in the city of Baltimore at Morgan State University.
I have not met a man of color in this city who spent any significant time in the city who hasn’t had that experience, an experience that was in some ways negative, some negative encounter.
So, what he said does not surprise me. I will say that, you know, we don’t necessarily hear voices like his sharing what’s happened. So, it’s without a doubt a fair description.
One of the things that I want to make certain is clear, however, is that is not the only experience for residents of the city when it comes to law enforcement.
There are quite a few positive encounters, but those negative ones outweigh the positive, similar to this past week. We’ve seen the negative depictions of persons who were engaged in violent criminal acts and those negative things outweighed the very positive things that happened.
SUMMARY: In the Sandtown neighborhood of Baltimore, where Freddie Gray grew up and was arrested, both the number of babies born to teenagers and the incarceration rate are exponentially higher than the national average. Tara Huffman, the director of the criminal and juvenile justice program at the Open Society Institute in Baltimore, joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the social aspects of life in Sandtown.
SUMMARY: Two neighborhoods in Baltimore are less than a mile apart, but have vastly different relations with the police. Hari Sreenivasan looks at how residents of the two communities are dealing with the recent unrest.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): As we’ve been reporting, Wednesday night in Baltimore was calm, in part because of the continuing beefed-up enforcement and in part because most residents are complying with the curfew.
NewsHour senior correspondent Hari Sreenivasan spent time in Baltimore, reporting on how two vastly different neighborhoods coexist.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): In the Sandtown neighborhood of Baltimore, a woman named Marilyn on Appleton street takes pride in the garden she’s tending on her front porch…
Pride in the tiny corner of the city she’s been able to clean up in the house that has been in her husband’s family since 1959.
But she is also scared. Scared to give us her last name because of the troublemakers in Sandtown. An element she suspects is behind the recent riots and looting….
She fears retaliation from them for speaking her mind.
MARILYN: We have drug dealers trying to come on our block down the corner, or whatever, we call the police, they do come, sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.
They should have buried that man peacefully, like his family asked, what they did, I think they did because I think they just wanted to steal, they wanted to take.
HARI SREENIVASAN: The past two days have been stressful for Marilyn, and her blood pressure has gone up, looters destroyed the CVS where she filled her prescriptions.
MARILYN: I don’t have my blood pressure medicine, I don’t have my medicine, period. Now I gotta find another CVS that didn’t get broken in or burnt down
HARI SREENIVASAN: For her cousin, Gregg Lee, a block captain in Sandtown the recent violence and distrust are symptoms of a larger change in policing.
GREGG LEE: You don’t see an officer walking around, only time you see an officer is, they in the car, they on the way they… woosh flying. When I was coming up as a kid, you had foot patrol.
SUMMARY: To learn more about the charges against six officers in the death of Freddie Gray, Judy Woodruff talks to David Harris of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and former Baltimore prosecutor Debbie Hines.
SUMMARY:The U.S. accounts for just 5 percent of the world’s population, but it houses more than 20 percent of its prisoners. Now groups on opposite sides of the political spectrum are working together to overhaul the country’s criminal justice system. Judy Woodruff learns more about the Coalition for Public Safety from Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress and Mark Holden of Koch Industries.
SUMMARY: In Baltimore, 25-year-old Freddie Gray's videotaped arrest and death has exposed a crisis long in the making. In the poor, high-crime neighborhood where Gray lived -- and others like it in the city -- a history of mass arrests and harsh tactics employed by police have alienated residents, and worse. Special correspondent Jackie Judd reports.
JACKIE JUDD (NewsHour): Baltimore often lives up to its nickname of Charm City. But after a week of peaceful protests, Baltimore is now showing itself to be an angry and volatile city.
MAN: Baltimore, we don’t have a good relationship with the police. They whipped our ass every day. This is nothing new to Baltimore.
JACKIE JUDD: Freddie Gray’s videotaped arrest April 12, and his death a week later from a severe spinal cord injury, has exposed a crisis long in the making.
The city’s police commissioner, Anthony Batts, acknowledged that broken relationship in a remarkably candid interview.
ANTHONY BATTS, Commissioner, Baltimore Police Department:Where we thought we were doing God’s work, where we’re going out trying to make the community safer, we have made mass arrests, we have locked people up, we have taken people to jail in numbers, and we have obliterated this community.
JACKIE JUDD: If there is a ground zero, it is here where Gray lived, Sandtown in West Baltimore, pockmarked by vacant buildings struggling with higher-than-average unemployment and poverty and a robust heroin market. It is a place empty of what usually constitutes a neighborhood.
There are no grocery stores, no banks, no restaurants, but plentiful liquor stores, a place seemingly without a future for its young men and women.
Ray Kelly had run-ins with local police as a young man and is now a community activist.
RAY KELLY, No Boundaries Coalition: You’re dealing with a population here trying to eat, trying to survive. And it’s not really about black or white in this country. Right now, it’s about survival.
SUMMARY: At the White House, President Obama condemned the violence in Baltimore and called for reflection on systemic troubles driving the anger. Gwen Ifill sits down with Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina -- where another police department came under fire recently for the death of a black man -- to discuss increasing police transparency and improving prospects for struggling communities.
SUMMARY: Last December, Brandon Tate-Brown was killed by Philadelphia police after being pulled over for driving with his headlights off. His family is not alone in their pain -- there have been 394 shootings involving the police in Philadelphia since 2007. Despite efforts to review and reform police training and transparency, the changes are far from reality at this point. Hari Sreenivasan reports.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): The death of a 25-year-old black man, Freddie Gray, in Baltimore is the most recent in a string of stories spotlighting use of force by police.
Many cities across the country are trying to improve relations between police and the citizens they protect. In Philadelphia, a recent Justice Department report found nearly once a week over the past eight years Philadelphia police opened fire on suspects, who are almost always African-American.
Hari Sreenivasan has more.
TANYA BROWN-DICKERSON, Mother of Brandon Tate-Brown: On December 15, 2014, I was going to work. I got to work a little late. I got there, I want to say 6:26. And I was getting ready to cut my car off. And I heard a black male, on the radio, a black male, 26 years old, gunned down by police at the 6600 block of Frankford Avenue, driving a white Dodge Charger.
So when I heard that, unfortunately, I knew that it was my son.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Last December, Tanya Brown’s son Brandon Tate-Brown had been killed, shot by Philadelphia polices, after being pulled over for driving with his headlights off.
TANYA BROWN-DICKERSON: To know that my son suffered like that and that I wasn’t there to protect him or lay my body on him, and them probably kill me too, it breaks my heart. I’m his mother. And I couldn’t do nothing to help him.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Tanya Brown is not alone in her pain. There have been 394 shootings involving the Philadelphia police since 2007. In many years, the department saw more police shootings than New York City, a city that is five times its size.
SUMMARY:New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including whether cops should wear body cameras in the wake of the video of a police shooting in South Carolina, what challenges Hillary Clinton will face after her expected campaign announcement this weekend and Sen. Rand Paul’s place on the Republican spectrum.
SUMMARY: Video that captures violent abuse by police or a government can send shockwaves through a society, but even if it goes viral, it may not stand up in a courtroom as evidence. Hari Sreenivasan reports on how one organization is training citizens around the world to shoot better video when they witness crime, while protecting themselves from becoming targets.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): This week has brought questions about police violence front and center once again, and demonstrated the power of what’s captured on video, frequently by citizens — the latest case, an arrest in San Bernardino, California, that appeared to involve excessive force.
Today, 10 deputies were placed on paid leave following the release of news video showing the violent arrest of a man who fled on horseback. It comes nearly a week after Walter Scott was shot in the back and killed by a police officer in North Charleston, South Carolina. His funeral is this weekend.
Hari Sreenivasan has a report on efforts to use video to document violence abroad and in the U.S.
And a warning: It contains images that are disturbing, including the shooting of Walter Scott.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Everyone is shooting everything with camera phones. The shooting of Walter Scott proves that sometimes video can be used as evidence against police wrongdoing.
KELLY MATHESON, Senior Attorney and Program Manager, WITNESS: I think that cameras in everyone’s hands means that there will be more transparency and more accountability. The camera is the new DNA technology.
The DNA is only available to specialists. It’s only available to scientists. The camera is available to everyone worldwide.
HARI SREENIVASAN: The Video as Evidence program of WITNESS, an organization founded by musician and humanitarian activist Peter Gabriel, trains citizens around the world to safely and effectively document abuse, so that video is as effective in the courtroom as it is on the Web.
How a bystander’s video revealed the truth about a police shooting in South Carolina
The Chicago Police Department has spent millions on high-tech spying equipment, including cell-phone tracking technology, but is extremely secretive about its use.
On Black Friday, 2014, the biggest shopping day of the year, hundreds of protesters marched to Wicker Park, a trendy neighborhood on Chicago’s northwest side. It was the third stop in a day-long march from one commercial district to the next: Starting at downtown’s Magnificent Mile, then heading north to an Apple Store, then west. Four days after the grand jury decision not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Michael Brown, the event was part of a nationwide action decrying complacent consumerism in the face of a national tragedy. Wicker Park’s retail epicenter seemed an appropriate place to go.
A Chicago police officer, however, couldn’t figure out the route. He took to his radio and called in a request to the local “fusion center,” the Chicago Police Department (CPD) intelligence hub. “One of the girls, she’s kind of an organizer here, she’s been on her phone a lot. You guys picking up any information, uh, where they’re going, possibly?” the officer asked.
“Yeah, we’re keeping an eye on it.”
The conversation was quick, but when the audio from the call leaked online, activists saw proof of something they’d long suspected: Chicago police were tracking their cell phones, using a controversial new technology.
The StingRay—both a brand name and a generic term—is a suitcase-sized device that acts as a wiretap for the wireless age. But while a wiretap monitors a single line, a stingray acts like a roving cell phone tower, vacuuming in data from all nearby phones, tablets and other wireless devices. This includes call history and current and previous locations. Enhanced stingrays can also record and eavesdrop on phone calls.
An assortment of add-ons are now available: The FishHawk listens in on calls; the Harpoon broadens the StingRay’s range; the AmberJack antenna helps pinpoint individual phones; the KingFish analyzes call patterns, doing in one stroke what might have taken Detective Lester Freamon an entire season of "The Wire" (cable series) to accomplish.
U.S. military and intelligence agencies developed stingray technology in the 1990s, and police departments began using it as early as 2003. Before receiving StingRays, police departments must sign non-disclosure agreements. It wasn’t until 2011, when the FBI presented information gathered from a stingray in court, that domestic use of the devices came to public attention. Civil liberties groups immediately sounded the alarm.
The ACLU says stingrays violate privacy rights because they capture information from every phone in the vicinity, not just a suspect’s. There are also concerns regarding Fourth Amendment restrictions on unreasonable search and seizure, since StingRays can penetrate the walls of a home and track a person’s movements even while inside.
The ACLU has identified at least 48 state and local law enforcement agencies that are using stingrays. While the Harris Corporation, maker of the StingRay brand device, assured the FCC the devices were for emergency use only (because they interfere with cell networks), the few available examples of their deployment show they are used for routine police work—and to spy on peaceful activists.
On November 12, 2003, for example, police in Miami-Dade, Florida, sought “retroactive authorization” from the county for the “emergency” purchase of a stingray on November 1. It was used to monitor protests at the Free Trade Area of the Americas Conference, according to a purchase request released to the ACLU.
Police departments have striven to keep the details of their stingray use under wraps. The Chicago Police Department denied owning the devices until April 2014, after local activist Freddy Martinez filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. In response to that and subsequent requests from Martinez, CPD admitted it has owned StingRay devices since 2005 and has purchased upgrades, antennae and software at a total cost of at least $640,000—but has not disclosed how or when the devices are used.
Stingrays are part of a post-9/11 push by the federal government to step up local police departments’ intelligence-gathering and coordination. Since 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has given more than $34 billion to local law enforcement, in part for high-tech surveillance gear like StingRays and facial recognition systems. Seventy-eight DHS-funded fusion centers, where police officers work side by side with federal agents, have sprung up across the country, and 18,000 departments and agencies swap reports daily.
The Chicago Police Department has led the way in the new surveillance age. A six-month investigation by In These Times indicates CPD is using its new tools to target poor communities of color and peaceful activists organizing against the city’s power-holders.
New tech, same policing
Policing in Chicago has changed little since the department was founded in 1855. When the old “police force” (a group of part-time constables) couldn’t put down a construction workers’ strike, the city’s business class pushed the city government to fund a professional police department. CPD was tasked with shielding the well-to-do downtown residents from the surrounding rabble. Officers targeted the poorest immigrant group at the time, the Irish. In "The Rise of the Chicago Police Department: Class and Conflict, 1850-1894," Sam Mitrani writes that while Irish Chicagoans made up only one-fifth of the city’s population, they accounted for two-thirds of arrests in the first six months of CPD’s existence. “While the police investigated a small number of serious crimes, the bulk of their activity consisted of patrolling the everyday activity of the immigrant working class,” Mitrani writes.
They also attempted to keep a lid on growing working-class unrest (which would erupt in the Haymarket affair in 1886). As early as May 1867, officers were monitoring rallies for the eight-hour workday. Police listened to soapbox speeches, infiltrated meetings, arrested speakers, intimidated strikers and shot demonstrators.
In the 20th century, various CPD intelligence units—known collectively as the Red Squad—broadened their target lists from labor unions and anarchists to, over time, Communists, black radicals, neighborhood organizations and New Left groups. Frank Donner, in Protectors of Privilege: Red Squads and Police Repression in Urban America, writes that officers stole mailing lists, burglarized homes and maintained files on hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans. One small community organization was infiltrated “apparently … because it opposed a cross-town expressway.” CPD launched its first effort at high-tech surveillance in the 1960s, using telephoto cameras to document the faces of protesters and rioters.
In 1982, a class action lawsuit quelled such abuses when a federal judge imposed a consent decree on the city of Chicago that prohibited “investigative activity … that is directed toward First Amendment conduct.”
However, playing on fear of black gangs and terrorism, Mayor Richard M. Daley convinced a federal court to ease the rules in 2001. The following year, undercover police infiltrated meetings of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization. In 2009, a judge dissolved the consent decree in full. In other words, at a time when CPD was testing out a new fusion center and an arsenal of high-tech surveillance gadgets such as StingRays, it was freed from the oversight that protected Chicagoans from investigation for exercising the First Amendment. Police could again conduct secret surveillance, so long as they filled out a brief “First Amendment worksheet” and received departmental approval.
Whom they chose to surveil was in keeping with the department’s long history. In addition to its covert obsession with activists, the department has never given up its day-to-day focus on the poor and working class. Today, African Americans are the city’s lowest-income racial group. Although they comprise only one-third of the city’s population, an analysis of 2010 arrest rates conducted by In These Times shows that 72 percent of all CPD arrests were of black residents (most frequently for alleged drug violations). Similarly, an ACLU of Illinois report released in March found that black Chicagoans were subject to 72 percent of “stop and frisks.”
Malkia Cyril, the founder and executive director of the Center for Media Justice, wrote in a recent Huffington Post op-ed that “indiscriminate and covert collection of private data expedites, expands and entrenches” such discriminatory policing.
CPD meets Big Data
In 2003, the Chicago Police Department introduced Police Observation Devices, or POD cameras—30 large blue-and-white boxes mounted on poles—with the aim of filming open-air drug markets. In March 2005, the city trumpeted the program’s first success. Camera operators had spotted hand-to-hand drug transactions and notified a gang unit, which arrested three alleged West Side dealers.
Despite this slow start, CPD tech wunderkind Ron Huberman, the founder of the program, touted the cameras as “the future of crime fighting.” Giving a tour of the control center to a Wired magazine writer in 2005, Huberman showed off the cameras, becoming agitated when he spotted what he thought was a drug deal. “You see that guy? … He’s pitching dope—you can tell. Fucker,” Huberman is quoted as saying. They zoom in on the suspect (“so tight I can see the wisps of a mustache,” the writer says) and see him holding a brown bag and money. Huberman threatens to call in a bust then and there, but relents, saving the footage to use another day.
Evidently inspired by the program even before the first arrests, in 2004 Mayor Daley announced the creation of Operation Virtual Shield. In the downtown business district, 250 new cameras would be equipped with algorithms that could flag someone’s behavior as suspicious and alert the police.
These cameras proved a modest beginning to what would become the “most extensive and integrated” surveillance network in the country, according to former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff. Funded by tens of millions of dollars in DHS grants, Chicago’s network has expanded to include cameras in more than 1,000 private businesses that have granted access to the city, plus 7,000 cameras in public schools and 3,200 on Chicago Housing Authority property. (Notably, 84.9 percent of the city’s public-school students and 93 percent of CHA households are black or Latino.) Another 23,000 cameras have been installed in Chicago Transit Authority stations, buses and trains.
By 2011, the last time CPD released complete stats, the number of POD cameras had swelled to more than 1,200. Of the 632 POD addresses currently listed on CPD’s website, more than 90 percent are in communities of color, primarily in the city’s low-income South and West Sides.
When CPD boasted in 2013 that the surveillance network had led to 4,500 arrests in a four-year span, Adam Schwartz, an ACLU attorney in Illinois, noted that this was less than 1 percent of all arrests. Numerous studies have shown that video cameras don’t reduce violent crime and do little to curb property crime. Given this, the ACLU wonders why Chicagoans should give up so much privacy, noting that the cameras’ zoom functions allow operators to closely watch targets and peer into cars and windows.
Meanwhile, in 2005, the department secretly bought its first stingray equipment, taking advantage of an Illinois law allowing police to make purchases outside the normal budgetary and procurement processes by using seized drug money. Between 2009 and 2014, CPD acquired multiple upgrades to its original devices, as well as AmberJack and KingFish attachments.
While it was buying StingRays, CPD introduced automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) with some fanfare. In 2006, Police Superintendent Phil Cline unveiled to the Chicago Sun-Times a “futuristic squad car” outfitted with an ALPR that could scan 3,600 plates per hour, automatically cataloging the date, time and GPS location in a central database. Police would be alerted if their car’s scanner caught a plate on a “hot list” of wanted vehicles. A 2007 CPD report explained that the ALPR-equipped cars were sent to high-crime neighborhoods, as well as “demonstrations and numerous special events throughout the city.”
Today, of CPD’s 25 ALPR-equipped squad cars, 22 are assigned to police districts and patrol areas with majority non-white populations. The five majority white districts share three of the cars. The department has also installed plate-scanning software in its POD cameras.
The cameras automatically send license-plate scans to a police database, which officers can check whenever they’re curious about where a certain car has traveled. The CPD also subscribes to a private ALPR database that lets it run plates against more than 3 billion records.
This retention of data is what most worries the ACLU’s Schwartz: “If you have hundreds of ALPRs around your city capturing hundreds of license plates every hour … you can punch in somebody’s license plate number and see where they’ve been, or after the fact, you can punch in the location of a protest three years ago and see who was there.”
SUMMARY: Hours after the chief of the embattled Ferguson Police Department resigned, two officers were shot from afar during a peaceful protest. For reaction to the events and how they affect law enforcement, Judy Woodruff talks to Chuck Wexler of the Police of Executive Research Forum, Cincinnati Police Chief Jeffrey Blackwell and Darrel Stephens of Major Cities Chiefs.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Late today, Saint Louis County police told the NewsHour that county and state police will take over security at any Ferguson protests tonight.
Now for a look at what this moment means for law enforcement officers in Ferguson and around the country, I’m joined by Cincinnati police chief Jeffrey Blackwell, who is in Atlanta for a law enforcement conference, by Chuck Wexler. He’s the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum. And Darrel Stephens, he’s the executive director of the Major Cities’ Chiefs Association.
Welcome to all three of you.
Darrel Stephens, let me start with you. You do represent tens of thousands of police officers across the country. What is your reaction to what happened last night in Ferguson?
DARREL STEPHENS, Executive Director, Major Cities Chiefs Association: Well, unfortunately, it’s another one of those tragic situations where police officers have been ambushed. Police officers that were at a peaceful protest that were completely unaware that someone was waiting in the background to take a shot at them.
So it’s — it puts the police officers not only in the Saint Louis County area in a situation of being fearful when they hit the streets. It has an impact throughout the country. It’s something that they’re used to, something that they’re trained to respond to, but, nevertheless, it’s an increasing challenge for them to go out, do their job, police, and police effectively when they have this on their mind all the time.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Chief Blackwell, what were your thoughts when you heard about what happened? And do you agree with Mr. Stephens that this kind of thing has an impact everywhere?
JEFFREY BLACKWELL, Chief, Cincinnati Police Department: It absolutely does. I agree with him wholeheartedly.
I think anything like this, what affects — I say it all the time — what affects us anywhere affects us everywhere in American policing. And so this act of cowardly injustice committed against these police officers has those officers more on edge now today, at a time when we’re trying to increase collaboration and mend the fracture that is existing in that community.
It makes it hard to move forward when you have these type of activities taking place.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Iran, whether Hillary Clinton’s personal email use will hurt her in the long run and the implications of the Justice Department’s report on biased policing in Ferguson, Missouri.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): And to the analysis of Shields and Gerson. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson.
We welcome you both. David Brooks is off tonight.
So, a national leader, gentlemen, came to Washington this week and spoke before a joint session of Congress, got a rousing reception, Mark. It wasn’t the President. It was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He roundly criticized any deal with Iran on its nuclear program.
What is — what are we left with after this? What are the repercussions?
MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated columnist: Well, Judy, when you feel it’s necessary to say at the outset what I’m about to say or do is not political, you can be sure of one thing. It’s political.
And this was a political event. This was — Prime Minister Netanyahu could have given the speech two weeks from now, except that there’s an election 11 days from now in Israel. He traveled 6,000 miles to make a very important campaign spot, appearance, under the auspices of the Republican speaker of the House, further partisanizing what had been a bipartisan support for the state of Israel.
And he made a very impassioned, I would say, eloquent indictment, criticism of the president’s policy. The Republicans were rapturous. They were adulatory.
(LAUGHTER)
MARK SHIELDS: Even, they were post-orgasmic, to the degree…
JUDY WOODRUFF: On, my goodness.
MARK SHIELDS: They passed, in the afterglow, the Homeland Security, which they hadn’t been able to do.
So, they would have nominated him on the spot, the Republicans, if they could have. And he made a case which has been made repeatedly in this country by other American commentators, politicians, public figures. And he put the administration on the defensive.
Now, they’re going to have to — whatever they do come up with, if they do come up with an agreement, they’re going to have to counter the arguments that he made. And we will find out if it helped him on March 17 at home in Israel.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Yes, what — what — and what about the Iran — any potential Iran deal? Did this advance the case, hurt the case? What do you think?
MICHAEL GERSON, Washington Post: Well, I do — I want to agree that it’s a bad precedent for a foreign leader to come and make the case before Congress in the place where the President speaks.
George W. Bush wouldn’t have wanted this from Jacques Chirac in the middle of the Iraq…
MARK SHIELDS: … against the war.
MICHAEL GERSON: Right. But — so, I think there are problems there.
But the problem is not just the protocol. It’s the argument. And the argument here is that the nuclear file that’s all this — the emphasis, justifiably, is not the only problem here. Iran is actually on an aggressive march from Beirut to Baghdad. They have proxies with missiles aimed at Israel.
They have proxies that are committing mass atrocities in Syria. They have proxies that are taking over the security sector, even the oil sector, in Iraq. And these are the real challenges here. As the U.S. is making this case on nuclear arms, a vacuum is being filled across the region.
And it’s not just Netanyahu that believes this. It’s also the Arab states that are making this complaint. That case, as you said, is going to have to be answered, is the United States abdicating its role in this region, which I think is part of the question. ----- JUDY WOODRUFF: Last thing I want to ask both of you about. On the eve of the anniversary, the 50th anniversary on the march on Selma, Alabama, the Justice Department this week issued a report.
And essentially what they did was, they cleared the police officer who killed Michael Brown, Ferguson, Missouri, teenager, but they said the police department in Ferguson was guilty bias, it was driven by a push to raise a lot of money, and had just essentially, in example after example after example, treated African-Americans in the community far worse than their numbers would warrant.
Michael, is there — what do we take away from this? But the President today said today, this speaks about something bigger than just Ferguson, Missouri, 20,000 people.
MICHAEL GERSON: Yes.
No, I think it does. The indictment, particularly on the Ferguson police force that relates to using the police as a fund-raising tool municipalities, and then having an unrepresentative police force, which then introduces an element of bias and discrimination, but the thing that disturbed me most reading the stories today was how — how much confirmation bias we see in a story like this.
Everybody looks at the report and finds some support for what they think, OK? Instead of analyzing, you have to approach this from an element of empathy. If you were a young African-American man in America today, you would see a system that’s deeply biased against you. You wouldn’t trust the justice of that system.
I think we need to be able to go in one another’s shoes when we read a report like this. Empathy is the real basis for eventual reform of these types of abuses.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark.
MARK SHIELDS: I do believe and I want to believe that Ferguson is the exception. I mean, the report on the Ferguson police and the pervasive racism of their practices is — cries to heaven for vengeance.
It’s the arrests. It’s the only people upon whom dogs were loosed were African-Americans. And if there’s anybody who needs policing, good, effective, honest policing, it’s people in lower-income communities in the United States, especially people of color, where the crime rate is, tragically, higher.
I would say that — you mentioned Selma. Judy, it is a political travesty that today — this weekend, we spend the 50th anniversary of Selma, the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Dozens and dozens of Republicans, including President George W. Bush, are going to be there — not a single member of the House Republican leadership, and least of all Steve Scalise, the Republican whip, who needs a — or deputy whip — who needs most of all to get right with people after his David Duke association was revealed.
SUMMARY: A U.S. Justice Department investigation into law enforcement in Ferguson discovered many disturbing incidents that helped drive distrust and hostility between the community and police. Gwen Ifill discusses the report’s findings with Rev. Starsky Wilson and Kevin Ahlbrand of the Missouri Fraternal Order of Police, two members of an independent commission set up by the state of Missouri.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): We turn now to two members of the independent commission set up by the state of Missouri to look into the events in Ferguson. Starsky Wilson chairs the commission and is pastor of Saint John’s Church in Saint Louis, and Kevin Ahlbrand is a police detective in Saint Louis and president of the Missouri Fraternal Order of Police. Tonight, he’s in San Diego.
Reverend Wilson, that was just scraping the surface of the findings in that Department of Justice report. What surprised you the most about what you read?
REV. STARSKY WILSON, Co-Chair, Ferguson Commission: Quite frankly, while the report was disheartening, the overall findings were not surprising.
We knew, based on the testimony we have heard from people not only in the streets, but through our commission’s work over the first 100 days, that people experience racialized policing, that they believed in their truth that this was driven by profit. We now see the evidence of that.
The things that surprised me, quite frankly, were the kind of salacious narrative of the fact that we have an e-mail from the finance director of the city directly to the chief of police suggesting that revenues be raised through direct policing practices. These are the kinds of things that should never be in public — in the public administration of justice, quite frankly, and they’re the kind of things that undermine the trust in governance that we need for the project of inclusive democracy to work.
GWEN IFILL: Kevin Ahlbrand, what struck you, especially this part about policing for profit that Reverend Wilson just brought up? What struck you the most about that report?
KEVIN AHLBRAND, Ferguson Commission: Well, and — basically that, the whole municipal court system.
We have known for a long time that it’s been a problem. We have never condoned ticket quotas. We are vehemently opposed to them. We are supporting a bill that is currently making the way through the Missouri legislature which would reduce the percentage that cities could use fees and fines for their budget. And we have always been opposed to that.
Part of the big problem is, if the police officer has to write X-number of tickets, that’s time that he can’t be out there in the community doing community-oriented policing. And that’s what we have gotten away from, and I think really that is what we need to get back to.
SUMMARY: An extensive federal investigation into police practices in Ferguson, Missouri, uncovered new details about the department's racially based and profit-driven enforcement and prosecution. While the U.S. Justice Department declined to bring a civil rights case against former policeman Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown, Brown’s family to filed a wrongful death suit Thursday. Gwen Ifill reports.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): Mourners gathered today at the scene of last night’s killing of the two New York City police officers. And residents last night expressed shock and anger.
WOMAN: At the end of the day, two families is missing somebody for the holidays, and its wrong!
MAN:What are we? We living in Dodge City or something like that? It doesn’t happen like this. Who does this?
WILLIAM BRANGHAM [narration]: Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were shot at point blank range, sitting in their patrol car Saturday afternoon in Brooklyn.
NEW YORK CITY MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO: Today is a sad day…
WILLIAM BRANGHAM [narration]: The suspect — 28 year old Ismaaiyl Brinsley — fled to a nearby subway station and shot himself fatally in the head. Earlier yesterday, Brinsley — who had a long criminal history — shot and wounded his girlfriend in this housing complex outside Baltimore before traveling to New York. He then posted a photo on Instagram of the gun he would later use to kill the officers, indicating the shooting would be revenge for the killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown — two black men killed by white police officers this year. He wrote “They Take 1 of Ours… We Take 2 of Theirs. Shoot the police”
The killing of Brown and Garner — and the decisions by grand juries not to indict the officers involved — led to nationwide demonstrations, and in New York — led to a public fallout between New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio and the police union. After the Garner grand jury decision earlier this month, De Blasio said he’d been warning his mixed race son Dontae to be wary of the quote “dangers” he might face in interactions with police.
COMMENT: Answer to the highlighted MAN's question, ask the NRA.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): In the aftermath of the police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, and the chokehold death of a man in New York City, civil rights groups and even the president have called for an increase in the use of body cameras by police departments.
Hari Sreenivasan takes us to one town where they recently began using them.
DANIELLE TORRES, Evesham Township Police Department: It’s green. I’m ready to go out on a shift. I pick it up. I put it on. I flick it so that it’s like that. Once it turns green, then it’s ready for me to start recording.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): For the last five months, police officer Danielle Torres has been wearing a small body camera when she’s out policing the streets of Evesham, New Jersey, a commuter town just 20 miles southeast of Philadelphia.
DANIELLE TORRES:The body camera sees everything from me out, almost as if it’s my eyes, whereas in-car cameras only see a stationary view of what’s in front of my patrol car.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Her department is one of dozens across the country that have adopted this surveillance equipment.
And Chief Christopher Chew, who himself wears one, says his officers have all embraced the new policing tool.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Protesters continue to take to the streets around the country following the fatal police shootings in Ferguson, Missouri, and Cleveland, as well as the death of Eric Garner in New York City.
Earlier this week on “NewsHour,” we had a discussion with a panel of young protesters. Tonight, we hear from a panel of law enforcement experts.
I spoke earlier this week with three people who have thought a lot about the subjects of policing, violence and race. Dean Esserman is the chief of police in New Haven, Connecticut. David Klinger is a professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Missouri. He’s also a former Los Angeles police officer. And Ronald Hampton, a former 23-year community relations officer in Washington, D.C.
We welcome you all to the “NewsHour.”
Chief Esserman, let me begin with you. Let’s talk first about how police officers evaluate a threat. How — how — is there a universal training that officers learn on how to do that?
DEAN ESSERMAN, Police Chief, New Haven, Connecticut: We’re trained in similar ways, different priorities.
But police officers are trained to go and to serve and to protect. And, sometimes that means using force, and sometimes that means slowing down the tempo and using what we know how to use best, which is a conversation.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Professor Klinger, as someone, as we just said, as a former police officer, how do you strike that balance between a time to — to be prepared to use force it, if necessary, and on the other hand it’s a time to calm things down?
DAVID KLINGER, University of Missouri-Saint Louis: Well, I think you’re always prepared to use force, and that’s the key, is you have to understand that these things can escalate quickly.
But, as the chief indicated, our best tactic is to create some time and talk to people. The vast majority of the time, we’re going to be able to talk people into jail. The vast majority of time, when people are upset, we can calm them down, but there’s times and places where we can’t. And if it doesn’t get to that point, the person remains agitated and a threat emerges, either to an officer or to a civilian, then the police have to move for a forceful action.
Unfortunately, sometimes, the first moment an officer arrives on scene, that’s a moment where there’s a threat, and the officer has to take physical force as the first option, essentially.
SUMMARY: Many of the now-daily protests on race and justice are being led by young people frustrated by recent grand jury decisions in Ferguson and New York City. Gwen Ifill gets perspectives from protester Molly Greiber, Tory Russell of Hands Up United, and Jessica Pierce of the Black Youth Project on what’s driving them personally and the movement at large.
I am Retired U.S. Navy (22yrs) and a Vietnam Veteran. After my Navy retirement I was in the computer related industry, now retired. In 2000 I was a registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Six months of having Bush in the Whitehouse forced me to re-evaluate my political stance. I had always thought of myself as a Moderate Republican, but was a Republican by "default" NOT because of close examination of the GOP. Due to what has happened in America since 2000, I now consider myself a progressive, and registered as a Non-Affiliated voter.
*Anti-First Amendment policies that attempt to turn America into a theocracy by enshrining ANY religious belief as law.
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