Clinical. Com. Thanks sarah. Guest thanks so much. Next a discussion about balancing Law Enforcement and National Security with civil rights posted by the Muslim Public Affairs counsel in los angeles during their annual convention. Good afternoon everyone. For those of you i dont know my name is seema ahmad on the chair of the board of directors for the Muslim Public Affairs counsel. Thank you so much for joining us. Im personally thrilled about the Panel Discussion we have lined up first for you. I want to be doing very brief introductions for each of our speakers. We will kick it off with a couple of questions and then have a conversation about the issue of policing and National Security on one hand and civil rights and Civil Liberties on the other. Immediately to my left is professor jody armour a professor of law at usc teaching torts and criminal law and he has written and spoken to and simply about the criminal Justice System, race, mass incarceration and we are really to have the jody, thank you. Next to professor jody armour is mike downing former deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police department. Mike was with lapd for 35 years recently retired but gave his entire professional career to the department and is a very very special friend of the Muslim Public Affairs counsel and we really appreciate being here today. Im going to kick it right off and start with a question to you you, mike. And the muslimamerican Community Families who lets they have a son or daughter that they think is potentially involved in something or has traveled overseas and they dont know where their son went or they think they have fallen into the wrong crowd and wellmeaning parents take it upon themselves to contact the fbi or federal Law Enforcement out of the source of desperation that they dont know where their child is. The next thing that they experience is that their son is slapped with the terrorism prosecution will be spending the rest of his life in federal prison. Thats the reality of some of the things coming out of these terrorism so the question i have for you mike is given that environment, given those stories and given that dynamic and given that Law Enforcement is institutionally positioned for intercepting crime can there be trust in the americanMuslim Community and Law Enforcement and if so, how . Think you. This is the first time im speaking as a civilian. I dont have a badge and i dont have a gun on and im really kind of liberated now. Not that i ever held back in terms of what i thought or advocated on this issue but for so long we have always said there has to be some middle ground. There has to be something in between the prevention and they interdiction of the prosecution. We have learned some hard lessons. Condi rice has helped teach us many of these lessons but the whole epidemic where we thought we could arrest our way out of the problem. The declaration of the war on gangs. You cant declare war on your own citizens for one. Secondly it wasnt until we saw there was some middle space and the ability to intervene to teach, to talk about character development, Youth Development and job placement, Mental Health resources and things like that. Criticism in this space has been e when this happens its almost this provocateur type of strategy were sometimes theres a perception that Law Enforcement has taken some of these individuals to places they never dreamed of going. There are opportunities to intervene from a communis seaside in also a Law Enforcement side what happened with a law the Law Enforcement side . It will take a while and a lot of credit to the bank for good things that are happening in the community to build up that trust and right now its probably not there in this space. But long oarsmen and community trust, its really about relationships and relational. Its not so much transactional. Its transformational and we learned over time anything could happen anywhere in the United States in a Law Enforcement agency and it doesnt matter for the happen in new york or washington d. C. But we feel it here because its all of Law Enforcement. Theres a lot of work to do in this space. I know that lapd has developed an Intervention Program that is owned by the Mental Health discipline so its really not Law Enforcement centric that law or smit is involved than it. Its being used certainly not as much as they can be used, certainly not as much as the Impacts Program safe spaces but i think as this continues to evolve and or ginobli as this threat continues to evolve its going to get worse before it gets better as we have seen. We had our first vehicle ramming into the manhattan where for the First Time Since 9 11 there have been casualties in a terrorist attack and i think that is the decentralization of the threat we are seeing across europe, africa and the United States. But we have always said communities are our strength and what we can do to exploit that in leverage that can build trust in that space is just crucial because they cant be us against them. Its got to be a collaborative effort. We have a long way to go and this relationship is very fragile but im very hopeful because i think there are a lot of people in my business the team that i left they completely understand this issue and they know the outreach and gage met and problemsolving in all areas, not just terrorism. Earthquake preparedness, fire hazards, crime, all that when it becomes routine and natural and we dont have this White Elephant in the room that we are all afraid to talk about. Think you might treat jody let me turned over to you and see if you have any thoughts on what mike said especially when it it compared it to the work you have done the criminal Justice System and prosecution relationships with Law Enforcement. We have to be clear that when we call on Law Enforcement to intervene in the situation like you describe then you are hoping the intervene a lot of times you are calling on a peanut of expression from the state because a lot of whats happening on the streets with handcuffs and automatic weapons is often a kind of punitive take on for example downtown on skid row right around the corner from here in 2006 we started a Safer Cities Initiative and the city of l. A. Deployed additional officers making l. A. One of the most heavily policed neighborhoods, and the most heavily policed urban area in the nation and at the time they were doing that they were under the said decree that said you had to end the Paramilitary Group approach and they which they did but not on skid row and with a Safer Cities Initiative instead they went to a zero tolerance broken windows approach and were fighting people and putting them in handcuffs and having them appear appear. To take care of that citation by simply going to one of the shelters and entering a 12 step program. Of course the reason you are on the street is because you are broken inside. You have an internal deficiency. Part of the culture of poverty that started out with moynihan and before really with Michael Harrington and in his book the other america and has carried or work with their thinking that what poor people have is the pathologists it needs to be cured in some way. What you wound up with their was a tentative approach to poverty governing using force to step in and issue the numbers wont lie. The numbers of citations and arrests firm minor infractions the court said the step in and say you cant constitutionally do that. Thats invading their dignity too much. And it was although the name is not retaliation or revenge but it was paternalistic punitiveness and whenever we bring in police to solve a problem recognize it has a potential, its punitive by nature almost. It doesnt have to be, unfortunately the program talks about turning Police Officers into streetlevel rather than seeing poverty as the problem of the lack of jobs and affordable outreach. We focus on the internal brokenness. Not that there arent people who need help and need Mental Health health. That leaves another 50 to 55 who dont fit that mode yet we are treating them with this coercive benevolence. I would just say as a general manner im worried when it comes to in cases like you are talking about asking the police to come and in the beneficent role to resolve an issue. Im not saying it cant be done. Im just saying you can understand the skepticism and we need to build that trust. I feel like i can call the Police Officer and say help me with my son or daughter. Instead of using stereotypes against them when they are supposed to be intervening on their behalf. And these are people too and all people have unconscious stereotypes and prejudice. They will find a way to express themselves and he keeps vigilance to keep that down. Do you want to respond . In this case we have to do something because the community didnt really know what to do and they knew if they called the fbi to save my son or daughters in the basement watching video and they change the decorah and i dont know what to do they seek prosecution. Law enforcement unfortunately is called upon to solve many many of societys issues and we want to help. Thats our nature. We are Public Servants so thats why we kind of put Mental Health as the lead in this wet with Law Enforcement at the table so that we can offer alternatives. Im not saying its a Silver Bullet and im not saying its the final solution to this problem but its Law Enforcements way of saying look its not just about her suit. Its not just about locking somebody up. Its not just about a rulebased society. Its about this balance between a carrierbased approach and the rule of lawbased approach and to show we are part of the community and we care about the community and want the communitys input and we want the community to be engaged with us in a problemsolving approach so it doesnt become a rulesbased Center Method for cops to do their work. I think sustainability of Law Enforcement and their own psychology they need communitys input. They need to be engaged with families because they have families themselves so that its not a soldier containing through fear but a Public Servant involved in protecting values, education, creating this inspiration in the community so i think for the sustainability of Law Enforcement institutions they need that kind of feedback. Cant just be about responding to radio calls and arresting people. Theres got to be this transformational relationship with communities. I dont want us to miss having the opportunity to talk about profiling since that is so central to the experience of so many lack folks, so many muslims muslims, so many immigrants etc. So there are a lot of socially marginalized groups who have to struggle with being profiled not only by Law Enforcement but by the taxicab, storekeepers across the range of experiences that you can have. My concern is that officers again just being people to, a lot of people think that it is okay to profile people if this is statistically rational basis for the profiling. If theres a specifically rational relationship between crime and race why cant i assess the race . I consider their age. I consider their disability status whether they are in a wheelchair . Why cant i consider their race in an assessment im trying to make. Thats the hard profiling. When somebody like Jesse Jackson says nothing more troubles me than all black congregation and turn around and see a white face and but Jesse Jackson says what he is getting at is the fact a few concentrate them and disparate circumstances you put them down in no surprise the crime rates are higher but what does that mean for Law Enforcement for example . If its rational to consider should Law Enforcement be serious in any way when they are making their assessment of people under different circumstances. I just want to make sure we put that to bed. That argument should carry no water and heres why it shouldnt and therefore an officer could internalize his morality when it comes to treating people equally and their obligations. The aclu president of years back tells the story of a black couple in the earlier 70s when times square was a different place than this now. Its not disney Family Friendly like now. There was a black dr. And his wife five months pregnant who are watching a movie at 11 00 p. M. , came out and it was raining. He told her to wait under the marquee, he had discovered she had been arrested stripsearched for being a prostitute. Lets assume perhaps counter factually but lets assume at the time the officer made that arrest a disproportionate amount of prostitution activity was taking place between the hours of 10 and 2 00 a. M. A disproportionate amount of it was being carried on in times square. Disproportionate amount by an escorted women and women of color. Lets say all of the above is true. He would say i made a rational determination and under the rational amp friends that i drew, rational profiling but the reason we dont buy that or the reason we find what he did so odious and it was some sense was rational the social consequences of error given there is some risk of air and judgment and given the social consequences of that he should have waited longer and rick used the risk of air before acting on that belief. He should have waited until he sought more people for example. He should have done more to make sure because its not just about rational comments about reasonable. Rational and reasonable or not the same thing. May have rational grounds that his actions are reasonable because to make a reasonableness determination you have to make a value judgment. You cant reduce reasonable to rational in every anybody who is profiling you keep bringing that home. I want to hear about statistical rationality. We consider gender in every situation, at night. But dont think that resolves the issue in any way. Now getting officers to adopt that insane now i realize even though he we are rational to consider this factor im not going to because im doing constitutional policing. Im going to let certain value judgments keep me from falling into ordinary human of life for. If i could bring that back to the muslim communities profiling is wrong. Its illegal, its despicable. But for example of the suspicious activity reporting campaign. Many people in the community were up in arms about this. You are profiling us. Its about what we are wearing. Its about what we believe in periods about how we look so we actually gave the whole Campaign Program to aziz hassan, a whole team that looked at it and they critiqued it. They said look we dont like this part of it and this is what you can do better. We adopted i think 90 of the recommendations and we published it and turned it into a special order. The theme was we dont believe in profiling. This is not about profiling people, its about profiling behavior in it that behavior is criminal or suspicious as it relates to preoperational planning thats what we need to report about. The reason i brought that up is because this was a problemsolving issues that the police and the community did together. We could dig dated have this program but it the community is not invested in it there is no value in it. We had something that the community said this is our critiqued. We took it and made published it we educated and taught it. Im trying not to be pollyanna about this because i know there are instances where profiling takes place pregnancy with. Ive seen it with my own eyes. I have disciplined officers for it. But part of getting over that is to have this community by yen, this Community Participation the problemsolving effort. We could have taken our ideas and turned them into a special order and educated our Police Officers but you still would have been suspicious about it. As it is now some people are still suspicious about the lasers policy that says we dont believe in profiling people. We do believe in profiling behavior that could be criminal or potentially criminal. Let me in should check with a question jodiann and we will get to you. Ive been hearing you talk and picturing if i was a young muslim man or a teenager in my 20s and i have nothing to do with criminal behavior. I have nothing to do with issues around National Security. Its the cases we are talking about are a percentage of relevance to the vast majority of the Muslim Community. We dont, not that you are suggesting it but we dont have secret cells and there is no interconnectedness between all this. We are just going to work taking care of our families and going to school. My question on the more psychological standpoint is the lens is being viewed through National Security even when it comes to partnership. The partnership is still through the lens of National Security. I guess my question for you mike is what are your thoughts about how that can affect our young people and what we can do to mitigate that trauma . I think it stigmatizes young people and its really heartbreaking to see young people have this identity crisis crisis, to not be able to articulate what it is to be an americanmuslim and what that identity means and what value that rings to the rest of our society. I think over time, i have been engaged with the muslimamerican communities for the past 11 years and my work. Prior to 9 11 to me it was an invisible community. In fact when i was a young Police Officer in a mosque was built right site outside of usc we were told dont go anywhere near it. You are not allowed in there. There was this very mysterious so we were always saying wow we dont know what goes on in there. When i got into this business just like they did with any other community with a Lgbtq Community and the africanamerican community, the hispanic community. I didnt get put in counterterrorism because of my background. I got into counterterrorism because of my values for the community because i know their strength. Terrorism in our country is i high consequence threat. We will continue to see it but look we need to prepare for earthquakes, for fires, for floods, for the physical environment of our communities and what he streets look like in cleaning up graffiti. Those kinds of discussions are what we need to really protect. In the words of doctor here who i always looked at as the Martin Luther king of the Muslim Community, he said god forbid they blow up our bridges and blow up our buildings. We can rebuild those but what we really need to protect are the values that keep us, why we came here in the first place, the values of the equality, the constitution. These are the things would really need to protect and we knew to begin with that young people to really understand what it is to be american and to have all those rights amongst us and to understand the simple nature of all that but to participate. I would ask in these town hall meetings, how many of you are involved in the Community PoliceAdvisory Board . How many of you are involved in the Cadet Program and Neighborhood Watch in chambers and commerce those organizations where we need to listen to your voice, participate in this greater idea and find ways to move beyond the walls of your institution. Dont be isolating and that will help. Terrorism and crime and narcotics are not the enemy. Complacency is the enemy. Thank you mike. You were saying do we start i looking at these through a lens of security or a lens of civil rights . Where do we start and we too often dont start with the lens of civil rights with the constitutionally per tech that i have a right to be treated as an individual. That right is actually rooted in the constitution for a reason because it is supposed to resist the siren calls of fears about security. Thats why its in the constitution. The reason for Constitutional Rights is the Constitutional Rights are these self commands, protecting itself from a later self, this higher self responding to the higher angels of your nature. We should respect individual rights even when its costly and inconvenient. We should respect them. Thats what a constitutional right is tying itself to man the problem is too often you have jurisprudence and lawyers and judges and law and or cement who are hacking away at the selfimposed coils in the name of justice. Listening to expediency and convenience insecurity and save the end sacrifice all these individual rights for that. Too many are hacking away at the coils in the name of justice. We have to bring home for thats what it means to be motivated and driven by this respect for Constitutional Rights even when its inconvenient,. Thats why we call it a constitutional right. Thank you jody. I have a question based on some of your work could you have written about the black communities. You have proposed the idea that if i cant paraphrase the correct a bad and some black communities there is the idea of the good black man and the bad luck man in the bad luck man is for, maybe hes got a record, maybe he doesnt have the job in the good black man maybe lives in your neighborhood, is middle class or upper middle class so theres a separation within the community between good and bad. And i would like to propose an idea that maybe that can happen in the Muslim Community as well that it had muslim is an assimilated muslim, someone maybe who speaks a certain way or looks a certain way or ask a certain way socially or at work. I would like you to comment on that. That you posited and maybe comment on how youve seen that play on the lack community and what lessons are there for the americanMuslim Community to not all into that trap of our community being more and more divided internally. Certainly in the black immunity act had nine neighbors come to me for example, i lived in west l. A. Referred to as the black beverly hills. You got a lot of up her middle last lack folks and ive had my neighbors come to me and tell me when ive had gatherings at my house with my three sons and we all play football or baseball because we make friends all over the city. So when their friends visit them ive had neighbors come to me and say we dont want up here. Ive had the sheriffs deputies tell my event planner we dont want southcentral up here. Even though we live in southcentral but its up here. There is the politics of respectability approach that you find in the black community and i think there analogs for lots of communities dealing with divides within the community but within the black community a lot of times its long lines defined by law and force meant, good and bad. He exhorted the black community to apology respectability and criminal. Chris rock, we get to speak frankly now, chris rock launches comedic career by putting and mike in front of him for social commentary. This is how he launched his career. He walked back and forth in front of a mostly black audience and its like a civil war going on in black america on two sides. Its black people and there are are and they have got to go. Id like black people but i hate hate and the one i might add for 45 minutes. His core definition of the n word was a black who has done a crime. According to that definition that he was inviting us to partake in he was saying up to 90 in some of our neighborhoods because they had me pinpoint sides, up to 90 of young black males have been based on parole at some part of their lives. And that particular distinction may seem much the moral distinction but when you look at the middle class lack crime rate they are the same so most of those bad art coming from truly disadvantaged blacks so what you have really is a class distinction masquerading the moral distinction. Thats what you really have. Thats why they are saying keep compton out of here. They dont want them up here. They were practicing spatial profiling. The black folks were always railing against racial profiling practicing racial profiling ourselves. So that is a kind of politicking that has been under assault for the last three or four years really. Likewise matter has made a part of their agenda. Just because the person took a loaf of bread does that mean he get to shoot them in the back five times. Like bill cosby said in his 2000 for me so bored, people were crying about that that blacks get shot over the pound cake. We have that kind of moralizing coming from a firstdegree person from him into womens dreams. He is going to moralize all of these bad and represent huxtable the black bourgeoisie. That is how that is played out politics or specs ability in criminal matters in the black community. A positive. Thank you jody. Our time has flown by so i want give a couple of minutes to mike to close out and you will oath be here to speak in more detail. Thank you. Thank you and its so good to see all of you today. Over the 10 years we have worked together i saw times where we ebbed and flowed and there were some struggling and challenging times but i oftentimes think its probably good to prepare us for what is to be the future. They think we are in for some real challenging future now with the way politics are going in with and with the way society in general is going in the way the evolution of this thread is evolving but always remember that this is our strength. You are our strength. All of the communities throughout her company our strength and never let anybody isolate or silo and a community because this is your right to speak out. As much as possible i would and gauge in the organizations outside of what you normally do, join the chambers of commerce, join the Neighborhood Watch groups, join the Police Advisory ward. I dont like that word assimilate. That is just a word that ive often stayed away from because if we assimilate we are all going to be like each other and the strength of our country is not that. The strength of our country is this diversity that we have and we should appreciate that the food, the fashion, the beliefs, the cultures, the lifestyles and find ways of better you can see that and appreciate that, i think that we have an opportunity to be a model for the rest of the world if we get it right. We have a lot of work to do in this country and keep fighting and remember terrorism and crime and narcotics and games isnt the enemy, complacency is the enemy. And keep love very much, thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] with poverty and issue in terms of the war on drugs or the victims of the war on drugs . How did poverty play it to that . What happens to families, what happens to all the collateral consequences of a kanke at jobs and they are not allowed. 45,000 laws across the country require consequences of one kind or another. Its a tour destroying somebodys life. They were poor when they went into prison there had definitely povertystricken for the rest of their lives. Its totally connected to poverty