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>>My name is Linda Garcia. I am the director of the leadership campaign. I have worked with a watch of you in this room to bring this project to life. I embarked on this project after my time at the Department of Justice. I saw the impact that unconstitutional policing has on communities, especially communities of color. When the video of the police shooting of Mr McDonald was released where he was shot 17 times by Chicago police officer, the Department of Justice opened an investigation. I had the opportunity to meet legions of community members and police officers across Chicago. I learned in those conversations that change was needed. It was urgent. It was not just change on paper. It was a conversation that was needed. What is public safety? What is that, for who, and for how? What does that look like were different people from different backgrounds? How do police play a role in keeping community safe. Those are tough conversations to have. They are needed conversations. You have to have conversations with communities who are ravaged by gun violence. They want a better police responses but they are sick and tired of having aggressive enforcement of low-level offenses. You have communities that don’t want police responses for folks who are in mental health crisis. These are difficult and complicated issues. The conversations have to happen between law enforcement and communities to figure that out. With our report the New Era of Public Safety, we aim to address a lot of these issues. This report contains policies and practices across the country. It serves as a guide for community members, organizers, organizations, law enforcement and government. With over 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country, each with its own leadership and diverse communities, change has to happen at the local level. This report is important because it offers a lots of recommendations. There are a lot of options. It is not a one size fits all solution. Many of the recommendations look beyond not just what police departments can legally do, but what they should do. In many instances, you can go beyond just the constitutional protections. Every single one of them is important and worthwhile. I want to make an important point. For policy to become practice, there has to be a cultural commitment in the departments that nurture and encourage it. The communities have to hold the police departments up to those standards. We also created a toolkit to help communities build their own campaigns to push for change. To bring this to fruition we have partnered with local activist organizations to engage in collaborative reform to implement policies from our report in those jurisdictions. You will hear from those folks in a a while. This project would not have been possible without the supporters we have had and the guidance of many people. One of those supporters was the law firm of Gibson Done. I would like to introduce Francis, who worked on this project closely with us. (Applause) >>Thank you so much, Linda. It is a privilege to be here this afternoon. I appreciate the opportunity to say a few brief words to express our admiration for the conference team. A huge thank you to Wade, Vanita and the whole team for their work and patience and for letting us be a part of it. I am a litigator based in the LA office. I have been working on the Gibson team since 2016 on this project. When the partners working on this first announced we had an opportunity to work on a project related to police reform, I jumped at the chance as a former public defender. In the early stages of this project we had 150 Associates engaged in research. All lawyers have a responsibility to fight injustices within the system. We have a brilliant track record of impactful and meaningful pro bono work, but this project resonated particularly strongly. What many of us saw in this mission was the value of this report and how it goes far beyond analysis of the role of proper law enforcement. Thank you to everyone who worked on this project. It recognizes two important things. It addresses existing problematic policing concerns in the criminal justice system. It frames existing tensions as surmountable, which is important. It does more than mend injustices. It makes tangible and empirical observations about best practices that have a real chance We are delighted to have the opportunity to contribute to this remarkable achievement. I want to share a few words of personal reflection from the perspective of someone that emigrated to this country two weeks before the 2016 presidential election. At this point it is perhaps trite to say that the last few years have been testing for those invested in civil rights advocacy and criminal justice reform in this country. Especially after the growing momentum evident in the 2015 President Task Force Reports. I witnessed a groundswell of public support for these same causes since moving here. That passionate and dedicated activism and dedication by organizations like the Leadership Conference, we are grateful. Thank you. (Applause) >>Good evening. My name is Gabrielle Gray. I am excited to announce our work with local jurisdictions. In Dallas, we teamed to support the efforts of local organizations working on civilian oversight. We are working with the Minneapolis NW -- NAACP. I invite to this stage Sondra Higgins from the Dallas police oversight commission. Followed by Leslie from the Minneapolis NAACP. (Applause) >>Thank you to the leadership conference and Linda and Gabby for bringing me up today. We are excited about the work we are going to do with the leadership Congress. We are excited about the toolkit. It is very valuable and actionable. I have been doing this work for over 10 years. I have seen a lot of toolkits. (Laughter) This one actually has value. It has value for organizers on the ground. I am the lead of the Dallas Community Police Oversight Commission. We have been working with the Dallas Police Department and the chief along with city stakeholders to reform the 30-year-old civilian review board into a 21st-century oversight board. Yesterday, we had our last negotiation meeting to finalize our plan for breathing. It is a great time. (Applause) Dominique Alexander is here from Dallas, along with Laura Brown. Thank you for having us. I am excited for our work together. Thank you. (Applause) >>If we are silent about our pain, they will kill us and say we enjoyed it. That is why we like to say if we complain about our oppression, they will kill us and say we enjoyed it. Therefore, we must activate. Grace and peace, everyone. My name is Leslie Regiment. I serve as the president for the Minneapolis NAACP. Greetings from the great state of Minnesota. We are honored and privileged to be working with the leadership conference, the Minneapolis urban league and Communities United Against Police Brutality. We know far too much how urgent it is to rethink how we address public safety. We have had to deal with the killings of Jamar Clark, Fernando Castille, and too many others. This will allow us to dive into the data, collaborate with our police chief and work with many others. We look forward to continuing to activate. Thank you. (Applause) >>Next I would like to introduce our fearless leader, Vanita Gupta. (Applause) >>Hi, good evening. It is great to see all of you out there. I really appreciate everyone coming out today for the launch of the New Era of Public Safety initiative. I will start with a few thank youse. There are a lot of people to think. As Francis mentioned, this thing was birthed in 2016. Let me begin by thanking the law firm Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher. Francis, Ben Wegner, George Brown and Marsalis played a role in doing the research and pulling this together. I want to acknowledge the amazing Wade Henderson. (Applause) My predecessor, former President and CEO of the leadership conference. Wade and Marsalis in 2016 envisioned a tool for policing reform in America that served as the early inspiration for the support -- reports. I want to acknowledge the work of Mary Friedman whose partnership helped us get here today. We are grateful to the advisors on this report. Longtime deep thinkers about police accountability. I want to thank our advisors on the Useful Community Toolkit. Andrea and Wes. I want to recognize Google. Their generous support helped to fund this initiative. Google has been making a significant investment in data as levers for social change. Philip from the Center for community equity has done this work for us. I want to take a moment to recognize some of the most important people in this room. We have mothers and families in this room who have lost loved ones to police violence. I am grateful to welcome these mothers and family members. Please stand up, we want to show our appreciation for you being here this evening. (Applause) You are the heart and soul of this movement. We know you are helping to inspire change around the country. We welcome all people whose lives have been impacted by policing and the justice system, and are now on a mission of healing, transformation and action. We welcome advocates, law enforcement agents and community service officers who are working for social justice. We cannot do this work without our partners. I want to recognize the work of the NAACP Legal Defense fund. Ella DF is empowering communities affected by police violence to make real and lasting change. There are so many organizations doing this work. The National Urban League, NAACP, Human Rights Watch and others. Most of these events like today are a labor of love. I want to think the forces behind today’s program. Linda Garcia, Gabrielle Gray, and the whole leadership conference team that has worked hard and tirelessly to make today’s initiative possible. I began my tenure at the Justice Department civil rights division two months after 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Tensions were high in St. Louis and across the country. There was another video every week of police violence that went viral. A national conversation about race, policing and public safety was happening. People were marching in the streets. The public demanded accountability. We also had a lots of folks fixated on this notion that body worn cameras would be the answer. People wanted answers. There was a sense that there was not enough information or transparency about policing for communities to access the broad range of reforms that could fuel accountability, trust and transformation. President Obama’s task force released a report in 2015 with recommendations to ensure fair and effective policing. The civil rights division was involved in a handful of jurisdictions to address policing and civil rights violations. There are several members of the Civil Rights Division here today. Thank you for being here, and thank you for your work. (Applause) The Justice Department had a range of programs working to provide support for police departments. We are in a different time today. The federal government has largely receded and opposed police reform activity. Communities and the people who have been impacted have always led this work. We cannot forget that. It is important to equip all of us with tools to advocate for change. This is what the new era for public safety initiative aims to do. We want to build on a decade of work about police reform. We want to go deeper into strategies about policing and adjusting. No two communities, police departments, or cities are the fame -- same. We know how linked fair policing and community trust are to public safety. Departments must develop policies and practices that support fairness, equity, procedural justice, and accountability. These values build trust, restore confidence and heal wounds. We have to recognize that over criminalization and policing have led to corrosive impact in communities. We are launching to efforts in Minneapolis to develop a vision of public safety that serves communities. We look forward to seeing these advances made driven through local leadership. They will model 21st-century policing practices for other jurisdictions to emulate. Our team worked closely with communities and families. We saw the input of lawyers, leaders, advocates and activists. We are excited to share this with you. We hope this will be a resource for all of you doing this work across the country. I want to close by saying that a new era of policing will not be had by working around the edges. It will require during leadership, persistence and partnership. A partnership that is committed to data, transparency and racial justice. And to ending our nation’s exclusive reliance on criminalization and incarceration. Were calling the police and too many communities is the only available resource. There is underinvestment in the schools, jobs and housing. I am pleased to transition us. I will introduce our moderator for today’s panel, Wes Lowery. He is a Pulitzer prize-winning correspondent covering law enforcement, race and justice for the Washington Post. He has been the lead reporter for Black Lives Matter. His most recent book 1 and Los Angeles Times book prize. Wes, I will turn it over to you. (Applause) >>Thank you all for joining us this afternoon. It was quite a commute for me. The Washington Post is four doors away from here. Thank you for being here. Thank you for the important work you do around these topics and ideas. There are so many familiar faces. Thank you for the work you are doing. You are not here to hear me. I will introduce an excellent panel of people to talk about what is here and the report, as well as these topics and ideas. I will read some biographies. These people do not need much introduction. They will join me up here. We will start with one of my favorite folks to call when you need a complicated question answered. Doctor Philip Goff. He has devoted himself to understanding how people think in order to prevent racially motivated behaviors. As the cocreator for the Center for Police Equity, he uses behavioral science to learn about the roots of behavior. That means he is a big nerd. He helped shape the policy of at least 25 of the nation’s largest police departments. He currently lives in New York City. He works at the Johnny Jay College of criminal justice. (Applause) Chief Scott Thompson has been the chief of police in Camden County, New Jersey for more than a decade. His law enforcement career began in 1992. He provided insights to the Obama administration about reducing crime. He is the cochair of the policing project at the New York University law school. He is an executive fellow for the Police Foundation. He got up here while he was getting his introduction done. (Applause) Judith Browne Dianis also had a long commute. Her office is also a few feet away. She is the executive director of the Advancement Project. She has an extensive background in civil rights and advocacy. Also around issues like voting, housing, employment. She joined the project in 1999. She was named one of the 30 women to watch by Essence Magazine. She has commented extensively in the media about issues of race, policing, voting rights and education. I will not introduce Vanita again. You know who she is. (Applause) B meet you guys over there. I was warned that I need to emphasize to you to make sure you use the hashtag. We will take questions sooner rather than later. Please feel free to tweet us questions. If you are in the audience, we will have microphones later. Feel free to interact with us online as well. We are in a moment where it doesn’t feel like there is as much momentum at the federal letter -- level than when we did these discussions a few years ago. What is the story of policing and policing equity in 2019? Where is this work being done? Why is it so important to put together a toolkit like this, and this moment, as we know so much work is being done at the ground level? >>You are right, the federal government policy priorities are quite different today. There has been active opposition to engaging on police reform at the Justice Department. The reality is that even when I was in the Justice Department this work was fundamentally being driven at the local level. Policing is local in this country. We don’t have a national police force. We don’t have one set of policing standards. Some countries do have that. We have a Constitution that is supposed to dictate a lot of the boundaries of policing. Fundamentally, with 17,000 Police Department, the federal government was touching at a faction of it. It was something funding and policy priorities and using the bully pulpit to influence and drive change through those mechanisms that do drive local work. It is important and timely for us to put this report forward today because in the face of a federal government that has abdicated its responsibility on these issues, it is important that local advocates have what they need to advance this work. That there is support for it. That is really the theory behind why this report and work matters right now. Why it is important that Dallas, Tulsa, Minneapolis and small and big cities around the country, that local pressure is being brought forward to make this right. Policing used to be on the front page of our newspapers. We used to talk about these issues in a more serious way. Now it is really Trump and Russia dominant. These issues have not gone away. Talking about these issues has been a real challenge. That is why it is important to come together. >>A lot of the work you do with the Advancement Project involves partnering with local activist groups to provide them support. This work is ongoing. Can you talk about the work that is still happening? >>From the work that Advancement Project does and others, this work did not start in 2014. Communities have been fighting this fight since the beginning of time. It might have escalated and white people may have become more aware of it. For black and brown communities, this has always been our fight and struggle. We are continuing to see the work. Having good people at the Department of Justice for a student was important, but people continue to do the work regardless. For example, in Ferguson, there is still a group of residents called the Ferguson Cooperative. They continue to work on things that concern the people. Things changed in St. Louis because people took to the streets. It was not just what was happening in Ferguson, but St. Louis woke up. The amount of power that is being built. We often feel helpless doing this work. Police departments are not really changing. We are not seeing that police -- 21st-century policing model at all. We have realized that it is our power that is going to change the equation. What you see in St. Louis is power building in order to control what is happening. People continue to do the work. It is slow. People have taken to the streets in Pittsburgh, Sacramento and although we are not getting in the media, we are not giving up this fight. >>What is happening inside police departments? After years of falling crime rates, there have been spikes in some places. How do you, as a police chief, balance the desire that everyone wants to live in a community that is safe? But also the expectation now of constitutional policing. That me being safe does not necessarily mean I am not going to be harassed. >>I think there are watershed moments. Rodney King was a watershed moment. Michael Brown and Ferguson was a watershed moment. Although policing as an institution thought it made a lot of progress, it was clear to us that we did not make as much progress as we hoped. For some communities where we thought we had started to build trust, it was a reminder that trust has never existed there. I am a fan of Brian Stevenson. I really took this to heart when he said it. You can’t look at instances such as Ferguson or Freddie Gray in Baltimore as though that is a momentary reaction to a singular instance of police violence. That is the flashpoint. There were thousands of interactions before that that created this powder keg that exploded. From a policing perspective, we just can’t look at that incident and determine if it was good or bad, lawful or unlawful. You have to look at is the root cause issue of it. There are a good amount of policing executives that are trying hard to change the culture. We find that the resistance we get internally is that we move too fast. If you talk to the community, we are not moving fast enough. It is trying to strike this balance. I really think Vanita and her team for putting together this report. Having critical dialogue with police does not mean you are anti-police. For police to really have the legitimacy and consent of the community, we need to have their voice and what we do. Policy and training only come through human voice and contact. The other thing is to create a toolkit that is not just new ones to a specific jurisdiction and predicated on some legislation. This is every police chief, councilmember or me or who has an issue and starts to see positive change with their community and relationship. There is something you can turn to now. >>I want to remind people that if you are watching through the live stream, we will get to questions soon. As someone who works with so many police departments across the country, and as someone who gets to see the back end data and information that some of us would kill for, what move do you see in some of these departments? Sometimes the changes and shifts behind the scenes are difficult to see publicly. There are often private conversations that don’t make it out into the public. >>When we talk about policing in 2019, we kind of set the table. We used to have a federal government that cared about this. Now the federal government cares about it in the wrong direction. Wes is still writing good stuff, but it is not as much on the front page. >> A mild correction. If I write it, it is still on the front page. >>I don’t think we said enough about what is not new. Rodney King was a flashpoint. 20 years before that we had a tray. 20 years before that we had Watts and the Kerner Commission Report. We had community policing in the 90s, which created a whole office. Then we had the 20th century task force. It is every 20 years. 20 years before that, communities were upset about targeted police violence. What I am seeing right now is the gas leak that happens for 20 years before there is a match. What is happening inside the apartments that is exciting besides just me smelling gas, is we have the first set of police chiefs who are saying they have to learn to smell this. Because it will grow -- blow up in their communities. When we started doing this we went to the Midwest. There was a police chief who will remain nameless that said his racial profiling numbers are better. He said that they were one black teenager died from this whole place burning to the ground. That could be anywhere in America. You can either lead or get dragged. You might not be chief of that department 20 years from now, but next time there is a match. At some point, you may be Sacramento or Pittsburgh. It is not making the headlines it would have prior to 2016. Watch what is happening in Sacramento and Pittsburgh. This organizing is no less passionate and worthy of headlines than what was going on in Ferguson, Baltimore and Oakland just a few years ago. I am seeing a cohort of chiefs that have the courage to stand up. And the common sense to recognize that we may be in a wall right now, but that is no safety for my job and principles. They are trying to learn. They are trying to create new DNA and culture for the department. Things they do every week. Systems that will outlast them. I am not saying that everyone is trying to create a whole new department. They are recognizing that the infrastructure and the way we were structured in the first place, that means we are working right. I don’t want to work that way anymore. There are chiefs that will stand with us who retire and come work with us because policing has been an effective tool of racial oppression throughout history. When you have a former chief saying that, and by the way, that was the retired chief of Salt Lake City. Let that mess with your mind. When you have a retired chief saying that, that is the new thing. It is the concept that we are back to the gas leak. >>I would like to add something. We have been doing work around the school to prison pipeline since the beginning of our inception. There have been at least 10 young people on video assaulted by police in the schools. Those are the ones that are on social media. Young people who are being thrown to the ground. Mostly black girls being beat up by cops in schools. We have been tracking app with our partner and we have a campaign or police free schools. At the same time, we have a federal government who says we need more police in schools. Because of Parkland, we need more good guys with guns, instead of less guns. Young black people are being beaten up in the hallways of their schools. I don’t know if people read about the chief in Portsmouth, Virginia. The chief resigned because the racism and sexism in the department was a problem for her to operate. She could not do it because the culture of the department would not allow her to do what she signed up for. We have some who are turning things upside down. Then we have the majority. Which is the continuing culture of containment, and control of people of color. >> Chief Thompson, can you talk about the work you have done in Camden? You guys do have a very different structure that is set up. Walk folks through who might not know the pathway you followed. >>I came up through the ranks and have been there 1/4 of a century. We had an organization in the city that was extremely challenged. Our per capita income is about $13,000 a year. We had the civil unrest and riots in the 60s and 70s. Extremely high levels of mistrust between the police and community. I was given a tremendous opportunity where we could essentially fire everyone and start over, including myself. I am fortunate to have people like Phil and Vanita to learn from over the years. Our approach to policing was the approach to a situation with the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. We have a community with high levels of crime, open air drug markets, and high levels of mistrust. We are far from perfect. We went from having over 100 to less than 20 open air drug markets. We stopped locking people up for it. I have evolved in this process. A 25-year-old police officer, sitting here myself, I did not think the same way I do now. A lot of it is because of culture, a shared set of values and beliefs. Sometimes you go to an organization and they don’t know that what they are doing is wrong. For us it was to take an approach to say that if we have a community plagued by high levels of gun violence and it is negatively defining everyone’s life, and socioeconomic problems lead to drug dealing, how can we change this dynamic and not use the traditional tools we have been using and failing at for the last few decades? It is very difficult to buy or sell drugs with a uniform police officer. We told him this is where they would exist for the next few hours. You can’t be walking anyone up. You can’t have your only interactions with a community to be in moments of enforcement crisis. That becomes the lens in which they identify you. That becomes the lens through which the police start to identify the people. They start to dehumanize the people and treat them lesser then. If you listen to communities, this is what you will hear. We try to change that dynamic by saying we didn’t want to write tickets or lock people up unless it was an extreme event. Quality of life enforcement. Talk to people, give warnings, but stand there and make friends. Even in the most challenged neighborhood, there are far more good people than people who are violent. (Applause) All that community needs is the ability to leave their front door, go to their front steps, and enjoy it. Those are The Tipping Point’s public safety. I find it remarkable about some of the neighborhoods we have been able to change, that this seismic shift occurred not because a cop was out there with a shotgun. You can go through some of the neighborhoods and not see a cop anymore. We provided an opportunity for people to occupy public space. You can’t expect a community to do that when the only time you knock on the door is when something bad happens. They know that they will only see you again when something bad happens. It was a philosophical shift. Community policing is not a unit of 10 officers who kiss babies and play basketball. It was every member of this organization is going to operate. This is our culture and identity. If you don’t want to do that, you can work someplace else. (Applause) >>For those of you who live in Dallas, you know about the video where a woman called the police to her house because of her son who is in a mental crisis. The sun walked to the door holding a sharp object and was shot and killed. There is a video about what de-escalation can look like in real time. It was a 13 minute video of Camden police officers going into a fast food restaurant. A man in mental health crisis was armed with a sharp object, not a gun. They use time, distance and strategy to diffuse the situation. The number of videos we have seen where the opposite happens, but to see this stuff in real time and a different response. Sometimes we talk about this and it is words on a page. This all happened within two months of each other, the balance incident and the Camden video. It exemplifies how things can be done differently when you have folks who are trained and using a different mentality for dealing with people in crisis. As a country, we have to ask ourselves why police are the only people available in these instances. There are a lot of officers who are not trained for this stuff. They have become first responders for almost everything. We have criminalized so much. That has been the paranoid -- paradigm we have used for so much in this country. Why is it always the police that are called to the scene in this incident? There is no way to redefine public safety without asking ourselves why it is that we have only had one response for so long. >>One more reminder to get your questions ready. I will squeeze one or two more questions and, but it is up to you. Please use the New Era of Public Safety hashtag. We talked about how there is a set of police leadership, people who don’t want the problem to be made while worse on their watch. A lot of people in the audience are activists or organizers. How do people interested in police equity best take advantage of this moment where there are some police leaders or organizations who are receptive to this conversation? Even when the federal government is not paying as close attention. Maybe that is a good thing based on their current priorities. How does a local organization or activist work within that space at the local level? >>Number one, organize, organize, organize. You cannot just be a lone citizen. You have to have power. Power comes from the people. Don’t go in there by yourself. Make sure you have a phase in their that you can count to show up when things go south. There is information in the guidebook about other services that are needed. There is recognition in law enforcement that we are doing things we should not be doing. We talk to police in schools who say they do not want to be doing that. Finding agreement on some of those things to figure out who are the other agencies to be involved. The prosecutor piece is really important. When you have a prosecutor like the one in Philadelphia, you have to be sitting at the table acknowledging what is going wrong and what you want to see. Some of that means you do not need to be prosecuting all of this crap brought to you by the cops. Being able to have that conversation about decriminalizing some things that don’t become arrestable offenses because that will push the change we want to see also. >>I completely agree with your point. I don’t put cops in the schools. I think schools should be secured from the outside in. Our job should be to ensure safe passage for kids to get to school. I don’t think a local police officer should be inside a school in less there is a crisis. We should not be responding to unruly students. 15 years ago, we had police officers in schools. He was conveniently being used as a disciplinarian. When I got a leadership role, I pulled police officers out of schools. >>We are going to have to lift you up as a promise in practice. >> I think in times of contention I believe the onus is on government for us not to circle our wagons. Us meaning police. We need to have uncomfortable conversations with people who may not care for us. It is hard to hate up close. I have found people who don’t like the police for a lot of legitimate reasons. Just getting close to them and letting them know that I hear them gives me the ability to learn from them and it gives me the opportunity to help them view our organization differently. People say they have community groups. It is the same 20 people that bring pizza every Friday. That is not where the community is. You have to bring in people who will challenge. It is not always comfortable. It is our job to be in their and hear about the warts. The level of respect will rise on both levels. You are more to get the benefit of the doubt from somebody who knows you and trust you rather than the first time you are talking to them is because you have to. >>We are going to transition to questions. Perhaps you want to raise a hand. >>I want to add on to what the chief has said and reframe the question. It is not enough just to show up. What worked in Camden is that you could tell afterwards that they heard because they did something. There is not as much follow-up as is necessary. What can a chief or executive do? I want to turn that around. Everyone in here understands that law enforcement executives work for communities. People lose their jobs because communities have lost face -- faith and confidence. I will channel the spirit of Ron Davis, who could not be here today. He is not gone. He is still around. (Laughter) He is on vacation. He is not dead, he is in Australia. He says that if you are only going to hold the chief accountable for crime, then don’t be surprised when crime is the only thing they are tracking. If you don’t want chiefs to only be held accountable for crime, expect more from them. It is not just about how they can get involved, it is also how you can be involved to make sure that law enforcement is accountable to the set of values you want them to be accountable to. I want to elaborate on something that Judith said. We can begin to learn from data. I was introduced as a big nerd. I am also a nerd in my spare time, not just professionally. We go in to our partner cities like Minneapolis and Pittsburgh. We say that some portion of racial disparity is something that law enforcement should deal with. Not all of it is just law enforcement. Nationally, black folks are four times more likely to have force put on them than white folks. How much of that is police behavior versus racism, education, employment and healthcare? Here is what happens when you can actually analyze the data. You get the disparity and then you can get the portion that belongs to law enforcement. You can say that 40%, 20%, 80% belongs to. But the rest of it doesn’t. The folks in the community are not surprised. Nobody is suffering from over policing things that is their only problem. Grocery stores are great, schools are great, it is just the cops. (Laughter) When law enforcement learns the parts that are not them, they can advocate with the community. They can say that the school needs more mental health resources. What is the community lead? vegetables. vegetables. You need some jobs around here, here, that is what will help that is what will help reduce the reduce the disparities. When you say a police that then that is power. In Minneapolis, the chief said that he to go to the homeless. They cut their force and gave a small portion of and gave a small portion of that budget to city resources that budget to city resources It is not just that you can hang out with nerds. hang out with nerds. shines a flashlight or spotlight or the brightness of the sun that everybody can rally around. around. Let us do this one first because the data leads us At the very least, At the very least, two fight around the two fight around the process. they go to school. They get selfish with the They get selfish with the things we can learn from it. things we can learn from it. >>You are amassing the data and putting it out there. I can’t tell you the police departments that are sitting on paper files and not studying their own data. The ability of making the The ability of making the data public to build power to build power for communities for communities to have data to have data and access and access to it to understand what is happening. And to use these numbers and push to have law enforcement serve as advocates. Making data available It does not exist in many It does not exist in many places. >>We will go into some Q and >>I have a question for chief Thompson. I come from Dallas, Texas. For some states this is not a problem in the South. Activists that organize and communities communities have a problem have a problem to put reforms in your police department while those unions were so strong? (Applause) >>That is a great question. That insight often gets overlooked in many communities. change the status quo, I was I was aggrieved, I was sued. Changing culture is not easy. There has to be a political will to do this. A police chief standing on union officials means that that official is valuing the union more than the community. The voice from the community can help put forth at a higher priority at a higher priority fantastic report. I want to follow up on Judith’s point about prosecutors. Aside from simply dropping charges or resulting prosecutors can take prosecutors can take to join hand in hand with chiefs trying in places like Chicago, with Kim Fox, who are refusing who are refusing to prosecute certain low-level offenses. certain low-level offenses. They are taking the role of legislature in a way and making policy choices and making policy choices about how they use about how they use They signal to police not to make certain arrest because those cases will not be made. power prosecutors have. make cases. There is a myriad of There is a myriad of progressive prosecutors progressive prosecutors who have made these bold who have made these bold decisions, and they have also been engaged with bail reform and the criminalization of property. A lot of prosecutors are testing this out. They will face a lot of They will face a lot of challenges as they go. innovation. innovation. It requires people to get It requires people to get specifically engaged and vote. It requires people to vote in local elections and run for office. It requires understanding the role that prosecutors play Louis were in 2015 Michael Brown were in 2015 Michael Brown the cop walks, organize. The prosecutor had been there for 28 years. People organized the election cycle and a new prosecutor. It is a black prosecutor. They understand person we wanted, Of course the ACLU Of course the ACLU is doing incredible work around this, around this, It is these cases like the George Zimmerman case George Zimmerman case that woke people up that woke people up to who Catherine Harris moment Catherine Harris moment for understanding for understanding Just like in Florida, getting elected giving the deaf penalty to people. That is the account of is no joke. that a lot of these people that a lot of these people Or they curated their team. (Laughter) They needed to have a They needed to have a different kind of culture. They are not going to court every day. They are curating that team They are curating that team the staff as well the staff as well on the top. >>We have a question that was Treated in. When we talk about policing in the New Era of Public Safety context, how can we implement some of the recommendations >>That might have been more >>That might have been more than 280. (Laughter) >>And some communities, because of certain union contracts, the onboarding of people in the discretion of the organization can be limited. In some cases, In some cases, if a person has not if a person has not committed a crime, committed a crime, you have to hire them. you have to hire them. I believe that everyone in some shape or form. in some shape or form. Especially if you put them through of psychological testing. I think there has to be put a tremendous amount of weight on the indoctrination of policing. Especially in regard to their initial training. to their initial training. At a PE RF we did extensive work work a few years ago a few years ago about reengineering the use of force. I am the product of maturation and evolution in my career. When I was trained as a police officer, I was trained to rush in, take command presence and control the situation. as the example of what we as the example of what we want officers to do, want officers to do, we are limiting their options. We are creating situations through our actions where the only thing we can transition to his deadly force. Very few organizations train Very few organizations train how to reupholster how to reupholster a drawn gun These are all things we are These are all things we are doing. When we have a person with a When we have a person with a knife, knife, we are not I can tell you the incident in the video, before our training, before our training, we would have used deadly force. force. Did it meet the criteria of the law? Yes. Was it necessary? Not really. why do you run up and stand in you run up and stand in front of them? front of them? That is not even a safe for the cops. for the cops. How can we say How can we say we care about our own we care about our own and tell you when you see and tell you when you see to rush in and stand next to it? with 10 year Race in with 10 year Race in Cleveland. If you thought he had a gun, why did you rush up to him? is officer created jeopardy. Wes has done a great job of Wes has done a great job of highlighting this in the Washington Post. in the Washington Post. Of 1000 fatal officer shootings a year, at least 30% did not involve an individual with a gun. with a gun. We have to handle these situations these situations in a better way. If you look at policing If you look at policing culture culture and training, there was a 21 foot rule. It was essentially a kill zone. They produced videos that scared every that that comes along. If someone has a butter If someone has a butter they are firing at 20 feet away. I learned that you cannot tell cops to retreat. tell cops to retreat. Tactically reposition. >>I am with the Dallas >>I am with the Dallas Safety policing, how do we address accountability with the intersection of We have seen things in a state like Texas SB four, in an unregulated fashion. Do black and brown activists Do black and brown activists still have First Amendment rights? I have seen that unless you are the NRA or a neo-Nazi hype group, you will not receive you will not receive For different groups, they sometimes get extra protection. >>That will be our last question. Everyone can go ahead and weigh in. and weigh in. the hashtag, the hashtag, I am sure I am sure can answer them. can answer them. >>Thank you for raising this issue on the intersection of immigration of immigration and policing. It is interesting to me It is interesting to me that the chief of every that the chief of every major city major city in Texas was advocating against Senate Bill 4. A law like Senate bill 4 sought to deputize local police officers to become immigration agents. on public safety and people’s ability to trust police. trust police. I have seen I have seen a groundswell of police chiefs around the country against having police officers used as immigration agents. The anti-emigrant agenda at the federal level at the federal level has had a profound effect has had a profound effect and police officers and police officers in in smaller jurisdictions really taking on this anti-emigrant agenda. They are incentivizing it with money. I think it has been activism like the kind you are engaging in to fight you are engaging in to fight back back against these laws to martial law enforcement to martial law enforcement support against having police against having police officers being used as immigration agents that is really powerful, and it needs to continue. There is pushback in the There is pushback in the courts Your second question, yes, the First Amendment applies to organizing and applies to organizing and protests. protests. You know that in the You know that in the Charlottesville incident Charlottesville incident the Charlottesville police did not police the line did not police the line between the neo-Nazis between the neo-Nazis marching and community members. There is a lot of history on these issues and tremendous work that has been done on the role of law enforcement and protecting speech and freedom of assembly. and freedom of assembly. If your law enforcement If your law enforcement isn’t engaged in protecting in protecting the local ACLU. And you work there. So call her! This is a real issue. It is against the law. >>In terms of I am worried. I am worried. been used to incentivize been used to incentivize deputies in deputies in at the level that is possible now. law enforcement and federal agents. For governments that fund their cities through the fees and fines of local law enforcement, enforcement, that is a problem. that is a problem. Some chiefs are worried Some chiefs are worried about losing their jobs about losing their jobs if they don’t take money. One of the first phone calls One of the first phone calls we got was from a progressive chief He said they were going to make can be racist and that he would quit his job He asked us to do research. The first bill before Arizona’s Arizona’s If you look like someone who If you look like someone who might be an immigrant, might be an immigrant, they could ask you for papers. We asked people who supported the bill if they were more or less likely to report a crime if they knew someone would if they knew someone would be deported. idea idea in place. in place. who supported the bill. You will have people just not calling cops. They may think the bill is a good idea but they don’t want that as a consequence. We have papers rights? When was the last time that the black folks that the black folks had the same rights as everyone else in this country. One could black people march like that with a whole bunch of rifles that would be OK? Our rights are always contested in these public spaces. communities. You have those rights on paper. We only live them in partnership with public safety. That is the answer that is important for advocates and for advocates and organizers. (Applause) This has been an amazing conversation. To join and get information about the campaign, text leadership to 52886. Our report and tool kit will in Spanish in Spanish and ASL and ASL in the coming weeks. in the coming weeks. websites for those resources. for those resources. We have a lovely totebag for everyone to take on the way out. We would not send you home with a 10 pound book without something to carry it home in. That closes it off. Thank you so much.