They talk about proposals in their respective states. Jeffrey rosen moderated conversation. Welcome to the National Constitution center. It is a wonderful institution and lets be again lets the nationalting Constitution Centers mission statement. Centerional constitution is the only institution in america chartered by congress to increase awareness and understanding of the u. S. Constitution among the American People on a nonpartisan basis. That is exactly what we are going to do with todays program with two very distinguished attorneys. A series that we are doing with the National Association of attorneys general thei would like to thank center for excellence in government for helping us put together the program. These put your questions in q a box as we are talking. I will pass them along and i know we will have a great discussion. We have to very distinguished attorneys general who will guide us about central questions regarding the police and the constitution. Keith ellison was sworn in as the 30th attorney general of minnesota in 2019. From 2000 and seven to 2019, he represented minnesotas fifth Congressional District in the u. S. House of representatives. He said that the minnesota house of representatives and also was an attorney specializing in civil rights and defense law including as the executive director of the legal rights center. It is an honor to have you with us. Mr. Ellison thank you for having me. And you for inviting me today. Yostney general dave became the attorney general of ohio in 2019. Ohios auditor. He was a county auditor and county prosecutor. Before that, he worked at Columbia Citizen journal as a reporter. It is wonderful to have you with us. Mr. Yost good to be with you. Ellison, you are at the center of a case including the police in america today. Around george floyd in minnesota. You have had an extraordinary background as a representative for minnesota in the u. S. Have house of representatives and end date civil rights attorney specializing in civil rights and defense law. Tell us about how your influence has been your approach to the floyd case. I have to go back to a man named frank martinez. He was my grandfather and he was organizing black voters in the 1950s in louisiana. He would try to convince people that they had every right to participate in democracy. They signed up a lot of people to vote and some of those people were ordered off of their farms, some of them were threatened and beaten. He was threatened and beaten himself. My mom will tell stories about how they refused to sell him gasoline in a city in louisiana because he was stirring up a fuss. Across they burned a cross across the street from his house. They called my house so much threatening to kill my grandfather that they sent my mother to a boarding school because they cannot afford for her to be there if some tragic event happened. Mom, everybody said we dont want you to grow to be angry, we want you to have a sense of responsibility. My mom was a social worker for many years. She did a juvenile Sex Offender Group where the judgments and her cases. If they made it through her program, they can leave without a juvenile adjudication and she spent her life doing that. That was the conversation i grew up around. Y dad is a psychiatrist he is 91 years young now. He is active and interested in what is going on in the world. Personally, i dont know if it was a foregone conclusion that i would do the work i am doing, but i felt that it is something that i do quite naturally and i was in congress and i enjoyed being there. I never got sick of congress created i never said i was done with congress. I thought that being a state attorney general was a better job and it would put me in a position to be of greater used to my neighbors. You can do a lot as an attorney general that is tougher to do as a member of congress. Basically because you have to work with 435 other people in the house. As attorney general, if you feel that the requirements of the law are met, you can act. I got into work because i really feel that the government, our democratic government and i dont mean partisan should be on the side of promoting the general welfare, protecting the human rights of all. Showing the people who wrote individual rights should make sure that they leave people alone. We do live in a society where the constitution requires that the government not impose upon people what it should not. These issues of civil rights, human rights, Civil Liberties in policing are issues that i come to very naturally and it is an honor to be up will to talk about those things today with you and general yost. Thank you for sharing that inspiring story in your remarkable background as a lawyer and representative. Its wonderful to hear about that and your dad, eight 91yearold psychiatrist. My dad is 93 and also a psychiatrist. Yost, you have an interesting background also as county auditor and as a journalist as well. First, tell us what the county auditor does then tell us whether your background as a journalist in any way influenced your approach to your job and give us a sense of the state of the debate in ohio. Mr. Yost thank you. Light andwas we give the people will find their own way. Motto sheds light on my career path. I would probably still be a newspaper reporter if my paper had gone out of business in 1985. Finding facts, finding what is objectively true and waiting for justice. In my time as a newspaper reporter and later as an itorney in private practice, did criminal defense work for a while early in my career. Through my time in Public Service as county auditor which is a sickly the Fiscal Office for the government county government in ohio through my years as prosecuting attorney and state service, it has always been about Holding Power anduntable and in check doing whats right. Finding the truth. Fighting for what is just. My dad is not a psychiatrist. Although he is still with us. I am very proud of him. I grew up in a family with six kids create. He got promoted from columbus to detroit. He didnt want to go with his company so he quit. And started his own company. One truck, one man. And built over 35 years to a successful business that employed more than 300 people in ohio. Integritya lot about and honor and hard work watching my dad built by company. I am honored today to be attorney general and i agree with you general ellison. Givesan attorney general to doeater ability justice than a single congressperson. I value and honor their work, but this is immensely rewarding. That is a remarkable statement. Lets pause to say how significant it is that these former representatives say that being a state attorney generals more significant in terms of the effect you can make. As we dig into these two central questions of the funding the police and the standards of Excessive Force that officers are subject to. Ellison, the Minneapolis City Council on june 26 unanimously advanced the proposal to change the city charter to allow the Police Department to be dismantled in the face of widespread criticism after the killing of george floyd. Tell us about that which would replace the Police Department with a new department of Community Safety and violence prevention. Is it likely to pass . Does your office have a role in supporting or opposing it . Mr. Ellison what i have done is try to interpret what i hear the community and officials to be seeing. Saying. I will not claim that i am the author of this call, but i have heard it and they are saying this is about more safety. Care about one in four rapes in minneapolis. There is a lot of gunfire in minneapolis. We are glad its not as bad as some places, but its not as good as it should be and it goes on with some degree of regularity. We have domestic violence. We have all kinds of problems. This is not designed to take away an agency that addresses these things. It is designed to be more effective and simultaneously reduce human rights abuses. Charter, theye are not going to call the institution the Police Department. They are going to call it the department of Public Safety and violence reduction. They will have people who investigate theft, domestic violence, sexual assault, all of these things, but they will reorder it with a different set of priorities. It is somewhat alarming when you hear about it. The people who propose that kind of label need to be provocative. Why . Because they have been calling for reform measures for 2030 years and they havent gotten anywhere. Andou things about training civilian review authority and that got demoted. They are of a mind now where they want to say we have to keep but in lineat with that mission, we have to look at some of the fundamental historic subdivisions that prevent us from being able to do it as effectively as we could. They began a yearlong series of conversations. They have a trip planned to go visit new jersey. It anotherstitute agency that does the same thing and they have had some very good numbers. It is not perfect. It minneapolis is not going to clone the camden experience. Day, that is the was going on. There are a number of Police Officers who have said where to be on a forced we have the trust and respect of the public. We dont want to be part of the two should where the public we rely on doesnt feel that we are doing what we are charged to do. We have gotten a lot less opposition than you might guess. I agree that the people who made having a provocative tagline is not went to get it done. And have stepped forward begin to put some greater definition. Mr. Rosen that is fascinating to learn the camden is a model for minneapolis. Andhe joined us last week they are working with him to train camden officers to learn about the constitution by talking to school kids in philadelphia. Very interesting also to learn that you are thinking of changing the naming of the Police Department. Says one viewer says policing implies force. Can we come up with another name . That is what you are doing. What about ohio . Governor dewine has laid out a series of proposals that he has asked lawmakers in ohio to pass including to license Police Officers like teachers and lawyers not allowing officers to use chokeholds except in lifeanddeath and not allowing Police Departments to conduct internal investigations. Tell us about the other proposals and what do you think is the best path forward in ohio. The most important thing we can do is to have reforms that allow us to remove the few bad actors that are on the police forces. Officersknow police very well during my time as prosecuting attorney. I was in a county that was small enough that i, along with my staff tried cases. Folks, knoww these their work and know how they conducted themselves on the job. There is no doubt in my mind that the horrifying videos we have seen from cell phones here and there in most of our big are certainly still the exception. They are horrible, and we need to make sure that that stops. General ellison and i agree on that. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of these goodhearted, patient, disciplined professionals who are doing a difficult and injure his job. There is still evil in the world. There are still people trying to harm others. People have is very few who are not fit for the job who are acting out. See it in the disciplinary records. It happens over and over again. Because of Civil Service laws or collectiveBargaining Agreements, Police Departments are not able to purge the ranks. Profession in america that doesnt have a licensing regime where its almost impossible to get rid of bad actors. Among the many things the governor and i have proposed, i think the most important is the licensing regime that allows us to get rid of the few people that are the sources of the appalling videos. Yes, lets get better at training and yes, lets clarify use of force doctrine. Hodgepodgeit not a but at the end of the day, the most important thing that we can do is to get rid of the few bad actorsso that the good can resume their daytoday work. On a personal note, yesterday i traveled to toledo, ohio. A 26yearold officer answered a in toledo. Y 4th it was a personal safety check. Sat out because there was a report of a man seriously drunk in public and his job was to go make sure that person was safe, to get them services they needed, he was not trying to affect an arrest. He was gunned down in cold blood. Yesterday, i was at his funeral and i met his young widow and his two little boys. That is the face of Law Enforcement. Men and women who are going out, trying to do the right thing, trying to help and make their community safe. Every time they put the badge on their chest and it often turns into a target on their backs. Paint them all with the same brush. You and thanknk you for emphasizing your proposals with governor dewine including the licensing requirement. Many countries require Police Officers to go through much longer training. Might that translate to us . In your comments that you have been able to make, you suggested that the case will not rely on qualified immunity. But you did say that officers have allowance to use deadly force. It will be interesting to see if that is brought up in the case. Can you describe the constitutional standards for deadly force . What has the Supreme Court said about the standards and should they be changed or reformed by other courts are legislatures . Mr. Ellison the case that we rely on now is a u. S. Supreme court case called graham versus carter. It basically says that you have to use reasonable force raced on what a reasonable officer would do in a situation. I think there is room to look more carefully at this. California is already taking steps forward to change their use of force where they have required use of the standard of sanctity of life. But you should avoid use of force where you can. That it should be proportionate and necessary as opposed to simply authorized. Much an officer will apply that use of force is determined by the culture of the community and the department they are and. The officers do have the authority to affect an arrest which most people dont want to be arrested. They have authorization that you and i dont have. At the same time, the use of force has been construed in very different ways over different times and different places. We need standardization. I think that graham versus a casewasnt we had called tennessee versus gardner which authorized use of force on a felon. That case that so many other officers relied on, that led to try to tragic results. Policy that use of force , something that is being considered very carefully by legislatures and departments all over the country and there is a growing trend toward saying even if you may be authorized to use force, if you dont need to, to protect yourself and others, you should not. Mere was a case described to by Police Leaders and camden where someone had a knife in a room and the officers said put the knife down and the guy did do it. I know of situations where the officers might go in by and disarm the guy and shoot him. What they did was close the door and called Mental Health professionals. They said he is contained and hes not harming anyone. While he did have a weapon, we dont need to use that type of force. Its not necessary, its not proportionate. We want to remember that so often what offices use deadly situations when the officer was doing nothing and was attacked. Situationsbeen other where we have seen where the saying move and the guy doesnt move us enough so the officer approaches the guy and the guy doesnt move fast enough so the officer put hands on the guy and starts putting him down then the guide makes a movement that could be interpreted as a threat than the officer uses deadly force. The point is, lets not bring the noise if we dont need to. When use restraint restraint is the smart thing to do to keep everybody alive. This is a training challenge. This is a matter for the state legislatures and departments. You can write whatever policies you want. If you dont do what general yost said which is to make it so the department can cleanse itself of people who dont obey the rules, those words are not going to matter at all. General yost in agreeing that we need to look at collectiveBargaining Agreements. And other instruments to make is theat the chief thatntable source for department. We have seen situations where the chief fires them and then the arbitrator puts them back on the force. What message has the arbitrator even to everyone else on the force . We had 12 officers write a behavioriticizing the of their fellow officer in george floyd case. Thats a big deal. For the sake of good officers, we need to make the trans the the goodn to reward officers and rid ourselves of the one smart fit for the job. Mr. Rosen thank you for all of that. Thank you for teaching us about two important cases. The grim because connor case, the question is whether the officers actions are objectionable or reasonable. That will be judged with respect to the officer at the scene. Whether the action is proportional and necessary. Not just authorized. The you told us about tennessee case which i teach in criminal procedure. Involves a felon who was fleeing and the situation in which officers can use deadly force to stop a fleeing felon and Supreme Court said that a Police Officer can use deadly suspect stop a fleeing theood faith they think felon post a danger to the public or to the officer. Understandingyour of what the national standard, the constitutional standards for Excessive Force are and do you think those standards should be reformed . Hasyost general ellison adequately provided club med on those two cases. One of the developing arguments we have is qualified immunity where it shields not just officers but public actors and the performance of their personal public duties. It is judicially created doctrine and there is some thought that the Supreme Court may revisit that at some point. Re were 19 cases seeking this last term. Them made it onto the shortlist to be decided. Argument ithat would like to go back to something that general ellison talked about which is minimum force necessary. That is in fact in ohio the standard that we trained to. Gets this is where we need to think very carefully about this. The question then becomes what are we talking about . Are we talking about a criminal and whether a criminal prosecution of the officer should result . Are we talking about a 1983 civil Rights Action which is a civil matter with a lower standard of proof . Are recently talking about job action and discipline for violation of rules and policy . All of those present a different issue. Will is in theu question of necessary. In his judgment is it necessary . The current case law, it is a reasonable officer kind of standard. Challenge with trying to make that the uniform standard is, we can very quickly and up with people having to make splitsecond decisions on the street without enough information. Without being able to see what a surveillance camera a block down the street from a different angle shows. They have whats in front of them and they have to decide right now because their safety or the safety of a number another member of the public is in jeopardy. Are we going to dampen their ability to react to that crisis by exposing them to criminal prosecution by saying later after we have looked at all of the footage and Surveillance Footage and talk to all the witnesses and gotten all the points of you out there that somebody with the luxury of 400 hours thats about what our average is in ohio on a legal use of force investigation, 400 hours of collection and the ability to sit in your Airconditioned Office in a soft chair and decide what was necessary. That that is a very dangerous thing for us to put on the backs of the folks that are out there protecting us. Thats why i think coming back to our proposals that governor , we are putting a proposal to have licensure of police with rules of conduct is so important. The right place for that level of review i think is at the licensing board. Not in a court of criminal law. Let me stress that there are instances, i prosecuted Police Officers for wrongdoing in my career. Right now in cuyahoga county, i varietyeam working on a of physical abuse cases of inmates by corrections officers. We had a horrible incident were the inmate was actually restraint in a restraint chair. They were strapped down and were beaten. We had another where a restraint inmate, one of the correction officers sprayed spray into her eyes while she was already strapped down. Clearly inappropriate uses of force. We are going after them. I am not one of these folks that thinks there shouldnt be accountability, but we need to think carefully about the dangers on the street and life and Death Mission that our officers are on as we consider these questions. Mr. Rosen thank you for all of that. The questions you raise about qualified immunity was raised by order offraternal police which are on board of a lot of the reforms that you the reformt say that of qualified immunity would have a negative impact. General ellison, understanding the qualified immunity may not be at the center of the george floyd case, can you share your thoughts on it . General yes said he gives officials discretionary functions. [indiscernible] said, justicet thomas just a few weeks ago said the court should that standard although it has declined to do so so far. Do you think the standard should be revisited and what effect would that have on the Police Enforcement and misconduct . Mr. Ellison i think the strong prediction of the existing qualified immunity law presents moral hazard. It is so protective that it allows people to not have to operate at the very highest level of professionalism. Attistically, if you look the history of qualified immunity, when the standard was , you saw more accountability. When it was raised, it is a judicial doctrine. You saw less accountability. Havek if the goal is to the most high performing professionals you can possibly get, you have to create an environment where people know that there was accountability when they violate the rules. If you say you can pretty much do whatever you want, and you have a really you have to go really over the line before there is accountability, then the bottom line is, youre going to get more bad behavior. Not talking are alleys, furtive movements, quick, splitsecond decisions. Those we can all agree an officer needs discretion in that situation and is not always going to be right. What about the situation where a 75yearold man was pushed to the ground in buffalo . Is that ok . Tripped, itaid he was an accident. Then they say that, the video showed different. We have tape where officers are spraying chemical agents out of a car and at people that are just standing there. You might say those are clearly wrong. Are they . Thoughtficer says i that person could be a threat you can literally come up with anything. As an attorney, it is your job to formulate arguments on behalf of your client as long as you are not lying. Lity, buttress credu the bottom line is, the problems we are facing are not so much those decisions that reasonable people can agree the officer needs discretion on and you cant secondguess them. That is not really where the problem is. The problem lies where it is a little clearer to all of us that this behavior isnt right, yet it gets protected from civil liability because standard for qualified immunity is so high. I think we would have better professionals, we would reward the good officer much more often, if we raised that standard and expected officers to perform at a high level and then say, those dark alley situations, splitsecond situations, we can agree you need some room, but not on some of this other stuff we see. Mr. Rosen thank you for all that. Ost, any response . That i will introduce another question. Mr. Yost i really question hazard there is a moral out there for our officers because they feel like they can get away with anything. Maybe it is a different difference in our backgrounds but i talked to Police Officers and often times in unguarded situations. They are concerned about getting sued. They are very concerned about the consequences of that. Dont feel at all that they are invulnerable from civil liability. The point ick to made at the beginning, which is, while i agree with some of the things that general ellison talked about, spraying pepper spray out of a police cruiser, clearly not an appropriate tactic and not one we would trend to in ohio, and i cant imagine any officer would defend that, but we need to be able to remove officers who would exercise their judgment in that butiscipline them perhaps, at the end of the day, i dont believe that removing qualified immunity is going to have a good effect, and there could well be unintended consequences. The better approach, if we are really concerned about qualified immunity, is perhaps to tweak the standard. Im not sure that we couldnt leave it in place with something less than what amounts to willful and wanton standard, that that couldnt be tightened up. , as aam not in favor of practical matter, eliminating qualified immunity. It is a little awkward for a guy like me to say, who is such a critic of judicial activism. Most judicially created doctrines, i am not a fan of. Mr. Rosen thank you for that and for reminding our officers that our audience that qualified immunity, which came 1957, wase in judicially created, harlan fitzgerald was 1982, Justice Thomas argued it isnt faithful to the original qualified immunity statute and therefore should be reexamined. It is a complicated debate that we will revisit at the Constitution Center. Have a bunchon, we of questions about the intersection of the first and Second Amendments. As an assistant attorney general rights by email, it is a commonly held belief in the u. S. That an individual has the right to protect his real and personal property. I saw this defense with a st. Louis couple brandishing weapons from their lawn as protesters went by. How does this right to protect property impact the right to peaceful protest and the rights to carry and use a gun . Mr. Ellison this is an interesting question. Nobody is going to say that if you are going to hurt another person or damage their property, that should be protected activity. Its not. That is obvious. Arereal question is, if you lawfully protesting, if you are protesting an injustice that you perceive to be a serious matter , like Excessive Force or Police Brutality really is, those folks who are standing out there brandishing firearms, to me, that is a concerning yes, because in my view, you may have a First Amendment right to express yourself and you may have a Second Amendment right to have firearms on your own property or if you are licensed to do so, or authorized by law to do so, but at one point at what point are you simply menacing another person . At what right at what point do you have a right to do that . If you have a gun and it is loaded and people are peacefully protesting, that raises some concerns to me. I dont think the first and Second Amendment wherever designed were ever designed to shield what amounts to a terroristic threat. There are some muslim houses of worship around the country, including in minnesota, and there are people who go out and protest outside of them, saying islam sucks or some pourable thing, and they are probably protected to say that. They have the right to say that and they have a right have a gun but when they put those two things together and go outside and house of worship where ,eople are lawfully behaving are we not pushing the boundaries of what those two rights allow for . Im very concerned about that. That thehe fact is Second Amendment is a very interesting piece of jurisprudence. I think we have strayed very far away from the original intent of that particular permission. I think, and even in the Heller Scalia says the average person can have an average m16 and brandish it against other people unless they are legally authorized to do so, yet now, we are in a we have folkse bringing ar15s into state legislatures, calling out the governor, insulting and threatening, under the auspices of the first and Second Amendment. I think this is something we will really have to grapple folks havese i think to be able to express themselves about matters they think are important. That is how change happens. We couldnt have a civil rights not comeif we were to to an evolved sense of what the First Amendment protects and what it doesnt protect. Remember, sullivan versus new york times, that is a case where the original case, they were suing civil rights activists because there was something in an ad that wasnt absolutely, precisely right, and they sued based on defamation and the Supreme Court said wait a minute , you have to prove actual malice if you are talking about public figures or public that case, and if you cant prove it was knowingly set as a falsehood, that is the price you pay for putting your name on a ballot. At the contours of the First Amendment and Second Amendment in the past in order to accommodate peoples right to say what they feel is critical, is true, and helps advance our society towards a higher level of equality and justice. Those are my thoughts on the matter. I would be curious to be in the conversation. Mr. Rosen thank you for all of that. Afeel like i am in constitutional law seminar where we are talking about landmark cases and the first and Second Amendment. Mentioned then heller case where Justice Scalia identified four exceptions to the right to keep and bear arms. Are laws involving carrying firearms in schools and government buildings and imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Your thoughts. Does heller strike the right or can the remedies be accomplished without gun regulation and constitutional reforms . Lets start off by recognizing that just because one has the right to something, that doesnt make it a wise thing to do. Folks, ohio is an open carry state. It is legal to carry a firearm unconcealed without a permit in ohio. The folks that would come down to the statehouse to protest or counter protest with an ar over their shoulder have that right to do so, and that is not menacing. Menacing is not a subjective thing, where you feel that somebody is acting in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable. Menacing in his is a criminal act and it requires an overact to confirm a threat. Simply carrying a firearm doesnt do that. Again, while i have a concealed carry license and support the Second Amendment and have been a hunter and an outdoorsman my entire life, i wouldnt carry a protest ifntown to a i were to go to one. I dont think it is wise. There is a difference between wisdom and what one has a constitutional right to do. The intersection of the first and Second Amendment is an interesting one. But the issue that was raised with regard for example, if a pass a law,were to gunstute that said that were forbidden during protests on statehouse grounds, i think that falls within Justice Scalia s thoughts in the heller decision. Want to seeng i that law, but i think that is something, for example, that could happen constitutionally. The st. Louis case was raised, and it is important to realize that those people were protesting on private property. You have no First Amendment right on someone elses property. You can take to the streets and say whatever you want, but if you are trespassing, if you are without theroperty right to do so, your First Amendment right is not implicated there. Actedile i would not have the way those two citizens in particularlyse to, i would have avoided pointing a rifle at my wifes head as i was hardly at, it is menacing threat when you are standing in front of your property and people are encroaching upon your private holding that. Mr. Rosen thank you for all that. This time for thoughts on rich and engrossing discussion. General ellison,. The first round is for you. As you see what is going on in minnesota, and look across the reforms,what are the either legislative or constitutional or legal, that you think are most promising and most important to ensure effective policing and a more Perfect Union . Mr. Ellison if i may say so, i think we need to acknowledge as a society that we have a problem. Im happy to see that many people, from a diverse isspective, agree there problems. Mentionedeneral yost the reforms he is working on. We come from different political points of view, but there is some consensus that we have to do something, because the situation we have is not serving us well. Say thatst want to this problem is longstanding. I dont know if you remember the did the dollho study in brown v. Board of education. That study that sociologist was brought to speak in 1968. When he was giving his presentation, he said, i appreciate this counter Commission Report but i have to tell you, it is similar to what the 1943 report that was written to the maccallum Commission Report that was written, a whole host of other reports that were istten where, what we see often, not always but often, in veryd brown persons disturbing conflicts with members of Law Enforcement. And we keep on going through this cycle, and we have to ask ourselves if a problem is this chronic, why do we keep having it . Dont we need to do something differently . Im glad we are at a moment of roof of reflection. Someday, George Floyds case will be something that happened a long time ago, and i hope we use this moment to make changes we have been talking about. I will mention some of those now. I wanted to say i am proud to be in this conversation, because it helps propel us towards really solving a chronic, sustained problem. Martin luther king talked about Police Brutality. So did the black panthers. These are people who are diverse in the political approach, but all agree on the essential nature of the problem. There was a lot of history here, but whether you talk about the stonewall riots where lgbtq people rose up to assert their badts, that was a interaction with policing. When you talk about jimmy lee jackson, this led to the movement that culminated in the Voting Rights act. This is a problem, and we have to deal with it. Thank you for doing this conversation. Here are the things i think we should do. Number one, i agree that we have to create an environment where officers who violate departmental standards, violate the law, the criminal law, are fired. We have to create that environment you the truth is, if you are an officer, and i would ost,e with general y there are many Great American to,ce officers but you have if you were to tell on him, you will face repercussions, we want an environment where if officers report a violation of law, those people will be handled and you will be able to work with people who you can actually trust and obey the law. We have to reform the system. Think we should prohibit collective Bargaining Agreement provisions which deny the chief the ability to administer discipline, including discharge. I believe in due process. The officer who is discharged should be able to appeal to the city council, to the mayor, somebody public, but not a nameless, faceless arbitrator who doesnt have the answer to anyone. Number two, i think we need to have investigation and prosecution of Police Outside of the normal process of criminal investigation and prosecution. Why . For the reason the general yost mentioned. I am a hunter. I hunt pheasant and turkeys. If you want to go hunting, i am game. But if you are hanging out with these guys on the weekend and on monday one of them is accused of doing something unlawful or in violation of a departmental regulation, there is no way you are not going to sort of see it their way little bit or be inclined to. Human element out and say the state bureau of criminal apprehension will be the investigator and the attorney general or some other office will be the prosecution. That way, we can have more comfort that it will be done without the normal human element. F familiarity the other item i would say is that we do need to ask investes, how can we not in housing and health care for everybody, a lot of people are uninsured even after the Affordable Care act, not invest in Mental Health, not invest in all these things, then tell the cops, you go deal with it . Have failed the police as an institution, because we take every social problem we dont want to deal with and say, cops, handle it. Then when they shoot somebody and they are not supposed to or chokehold them to death when they are not supposed to, we are upset that we have uprisings. What if we took the burden off the shoulders of the police and said, you are not going to have to roust Homeless People out of the park . We will give people homes. You are not, we are not going to ask you to arrest people for a fake 20 bill because we will have people whod who do those property crimes that dont involve armed men with guns dealing with that. We will deal with the problems of society. We will have a real Mental Health response for people so dont, 24yearold who got out of the Academy Weeks ago will have to deal with somebody in an autistic meltdown, which is what they have to do now. It is not fair. Those are a few ideas for now. I want to thank the National Constitution center in general yost, and you, for a great conversation. Mr. Rosen thank you for those eloquent final thoughts and for invoking brown versus board of education. The new brown, and we are all watching closely. The last words are to you. Your thoughts to our audience about what legal, constitutional, or judicial reforms you think are most, promising for achieving a more fair and Perfect Union . And ist general ellison agree on some of those things, independent investigations and prosecution and licensing are things we have proposed in ohio. We need to do a better job of training. We need to find training. We need to fund the local officers, because when we take somebody out of service to train , the Police Department has to fill that shift. It takes seven officers to have days ahour shift seven week, 52 weeks a year. Taking people out of service quickly has an impact on the street. Things i want to mention in closing. The first is the defund the police issue. Partnershipsing in. What we do in columbus, there is , Specialized Team of 10 people five officers and five Mental Health professionals, that respond to Mental Health type calls, which certainly are on every Police Departments docket. The notion that we will defund the police, words matter. Defund police means take money away from police and that means we are going to have less accomplish those functions. Why do we have government in the first place . Lets go back to Thomas Hobbes and the natural state of man, in the natural state, mankind, humankind, the strongest take from the weakest. Your person, your family, your property is not safe. The reason we have government is to preserve that, to have Public Safety, to have the rule of law, because there is evil in the world. There are people who want to take your stuff and if they can hurt you or enslave you, they will. Function andirst most important function of government. I understand it is a sticky hashtag, but the City Council President of minneapolis, when asked about this by cnn, affirmed that Defund Police means Defund Police. She says she envisions a policefree future. I dont want to live in that kind of a city, because it would be anarchy and you will have a lot more than that couple in st. Louis out there with firearms on the street. It is not a place we should go. Didnt meanovement i sympathize with what is happening to those women. The Metoo Movement happened because words matter, and women were saying, what happened to those women with harvey weinstein, me too. That happened to me, too. That is why it was so powerful. Words mean something. No means no. Defund police means defund the police. It is a dangerous idea. Ily, let me conclude by imagine some of the people on this call saw a video of a young africanamerican man in his teens talking about the rules his mother taught him for surviving in the world. Reciting was him these, and you could tell his mother had told him this over and over and over again. Always get a receipt or a bag when you are in the store. Even if it is something as small as a piece of gum, and dont look at a white woman too long. Dont go out of the house without a shirt. Things that i would ask my friends in the majority community, did your mom teach you those things . Assume that you start out a suspect, that you are going to be blamed . My mom didnt teach me that stuff. I guess most of my friends who are white didnt have that lecture from their moms about keeping their hands on the Steering Wheel at 10 and 2 if they get pulled over, to get permission before they get their drivers license out of their pocket. That video of that young mans testimony was proof be on a reasonable doubt that racism not only exists in america, but intended or not, it is endemic enough that it is a fact of life for those United States citizens of color. As we are talking about police reform, i think it is important we recognize that we dont have fundamentally, a Police Problem here. We have a societal problem that has a Law Enforcement component. It is time that we change hearts and minds, and perhaps we can have another discussion at some point in the future on how we might do that after all this time. But i appreciate the opportunity to be a part of this conversation. Mr. Rosen thank you. Honored to have another conversation. Im grateful to both of you and to the association of attorneys for starting this partnership to band together attorneys general of different political perspectives to discuss areas of disagreement and agreement on the constitution. It is educational, and it is very meaningful for the Constitution Center to be able to host these conversations. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for your Great Questions and join me in thanking these attorneys general for a wonderful conversation. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] cspan has unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the Supreme Court, and Public Policy events. Watch cspans Public Affairs programming on television, online, or listen on our free radio app. Be part of the National Conversation through cspans daily Washington Journal Program , or through our social media feeds. Cspan, created by americans americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. We are joined by syndicated columnist cal thomas to talk about president Trumps Campaign and Election Campaign 2020. Welcome to washington journal. We talked a few minutes ago about the