Transcripts For CSPAN Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20141222

We shouldve been coming to the conversation the table along time ago. We stood down with police. This is what is happening. This is where we are having the problem. This is where we want it to stop. We also got together and started looking at the lessons of putting these people into office. Talking about the situation down there. Going to be our last collar on todays washington journal. We will see you right back here tomorrow morning. Hope you have a great monday. All this week highlighting books during the authors series. Tomorrow Cheryl Atkinson on her water her book, stonewalled. On wednesday shane harris and out war the rise of the military internet complex. Day as friday, clarence page. Columnist 1904 to 1918. This year q1 day turns 10 years old. To mark a decade of conversations, we are featuring one interview over the holiday season. Today kenneth feinberg, special master of the 911 fund and what his life is like. That will be at 7 00 eastern here on cspan. The nih onrector of the promise and challenges of cancer research. Looking at unprecedented innovation in an environment of shrinking rhetoric federal resources. Home in amazing to see the insight. Theyre coming from technology we did not have before. The whole genomics revolution insight into how things work and how things go wrong sometimes. The effort to understand the of the advance of Clinical Health records. All of these things coming together in a way i would not have imagined would happen in my lifetime, and yet we are not nurturing that engine of discovery the way we could the. A statistic i think is troubling and discouraging to young scientists is the following, what is your chance yeah, you cancergreat idea about research and is preclinical and you have the next idea, where are you going to go to get funded . What is the chance your grant will get funded cap 01 and six. Will get funded . 1 in 6. Cancer research it is 1 in 10, even lower. Cancer on the state of research from francis collins. Next, a look at reducing violence in predominantly africanamerican communities. Efforts to keep kids in school in using a special prosecutor when officers are involved in shootings. This is about an hour and a half. Want to start by highlighting a couple of the things that those of us think are important for the record. Multifaceted approach to finding a solution. It has to include stakeholders, successfulng for systems change. Dealcognize in order to with the issue, we have to talk about changing systems. The problem will not be istalled today, but our goal for the audience to first and foremost provoke thought. This, andu to get to finally, we want you to leave with specifics on what you might be able to do when you get back home. Onays conversation focuses recent acts of officer violence, cop violence against young black men and addressing gang and Domestic Violence in our communities. Violence has always been a community of color but recent events have put it at the forefront in most of not all of our minds and our own state we have hadolina three indictments against Law Enforcement officers for shooting young men of color. Just some statistics as you listen to the presentation. Africanamericans are about three times as likely as white drivers and two times as likely as latino drivers to be searched during a traffic stop, even though they are significantly less likely than whites to have contraband when they are stopped. Although there is no additional database on the total number of officerinvolve the tablet is coming each year between 2005 and 2012, a black her son was killed nearly twice a week by police. With almost 20 of those being killed under the age of 21. We talk about our next generation, hopefully the statistic in and of itself will impress upon you the fierce urgency of now in our taking action. These facts deserve a better Public Policy response, and that is why we are here. At the same time, we face violence within our own community. At nbc sl, we are not running away from that fact. We knowledge that. But we wanted to be clear that africanamerican firearm related deaths are twice as high as they are for whites. Black women are almost three times as likely to experience death as a result of domestic or intimate partner violence. Teen or Youth Violence continues to be a problem, especially among black males between the ages of 10 years old and weigh four years old, whose homicide rate exceed those of hispanics and whites in the same age group. We recognize that interviolence interracial violence let me try this again. I was thing about Rudy Giuliani and i lost my train of thought. [laughter] a try this 11 more. Let me try this one once more. We recognize that intrarasul racial violence is not unique to the black community. [applause] i wasnt fishing for a comment. That said, the violence within our Community Also merits are full attention and sustained emphasis on sustained commitment to doing something about it. We need social action and collaboration from the public and private sector, and i will because all of these stats are beginning to overwhelm you. My eyes glazed over, and i started off saying its not about me, its about these men and women on the panel read let me quickly moved to that. Before we hear from the people on the panel, i want to take a moment to introduce a young man who is taken the time to comment from the administration to share the administrations position on this issue. And before we get to our panelists, please allow me to introduce mr. Roy austan, the Deputy Assistant to the president for the office of urban affairs, justice, and opportunity. As Deputy Assistant, he coordinates policy, covering terminal justice, civil criminal rights, civil rights, housing, and other areas. He is a member of my brothers keeper task force. Please welcome mr. Austin. [applause] good morning. With a name like roy austan, some of you might think i am from texas, but im from the great state of pennsylvania. The let me start, and thank you ms. Cobb hunter. Let me start with some words from the president. This is from a speech he gave not too long ago. And he said i say as someone who believes that Law Enforcement has a incredible difficult job. That every man in uniform every man and woman in uniform are putting their lives a risk to protect us. They have the right to come home from their jobs just like we do. But there is real crime out there, and they have got to tackle day in and day out. But they are only going to be able to do their job effectively if everybody has confidence in the system. And right now, unfortunately, we are seeing too many instances where people just do not have confidence that folks are being treated fairly. In some cases, those may be misrepresentations, but in some cases, that is a reality. It is incumbent upon all of us as americans, regardless of race or region, or faith, that we recognize that this is an american problem, and not just a black problem, for a brown problem, or native american problem, this is an american problem. When anybody in this country is not being treated equally, under the law, that is a problem. It is my job as president to help solve it. And those the words of our president , and he has been doing what he can do to help solve it. So let me continue with some of these statistics. Some of these many of you know already. We have 5 of the worlds population, and yet 25 of the worlds inmates. One third of all americans have some kind of arrest record or criminal history. It is 2. 2 Million People who are currently incarcerated in our jails and prisons around this country. We know for a fact that the impact of a criminal record is enormous, both on the individual, on the individuals families, and on our communities. We absolutely know that the impact on the Africanamerican Community is far greater than it is on any other community. We also know that the levels of incarceration that we see today are unsustainable. They are unsustainable financially. They are unsustainably sociably. And to be honest with you, they are on sustainable unsustainable morley. Morally. We know this is bigger than just the criminal Justice System. We know this is about jobs, housing, and education. We know all those things matter, and one of the best things we can do to help to fix the criminal Justice System is to make sure people have jobs. This president has created over 10 million jobs. But lets talk about the criminal Justice System, and things that have already been done. Things that i would hope youre doing in your districts to move forward and to help solve the problems we see in the criminal Justice System. One thing is the School Discipline guide that was put out by the department of educations and apartment of justice. Department of justice. We know that youth of color are disciplined more severely than other youth in their schools. This guidance helps to educate Health Educators help to fix that problem. We know that attorney general holder has instituted what is called smart on crime. To look at only the most serious defenses, so we are not incarcerating people for the wrong reasons. The office of juvenile justice has turned that and made it smart on juvenile justice, so were looking at alternatives to incarceration for our youth great we know that we have the justice reinvestment initiative, which is currently in existence in 21 jurisdictions. When it was justin 17, it was evaluated and found that over 10 years, it was save us 4 billion by not locking up so many people. It is working. For the first time in 40 years, we have seen a reduction both in incarceration, and in crime. The first time in 40 years. We know that we do not have to incarcerate everybody. For there to be Public Safety. We know that for the first time, weve seen a deep freeze and federal incarceration. We know that many states, including the state of texas are reducing the number of peoples who were incarcerated substantially enough eating an increase in crime. We know we can get these numbers down even further. We also recognize there is more to do. And the more to do is the president Just Announced a task force of 21st Century Policing that is going to look at policing across this country. We know that we just looked at all of the equipment programs, 18 billion going into Police Department. And that is going to be reformed. We Just Announced 75 million we want to see go towards body cameras. The president , the attorney general, and the secretary of education Just Announced a correctional education guidance for kids who are incarcerated. We know we have my brothers keeper communities out there, over 200 communities that have stepped up to push forth the my brothers Keeper Community program. We know this is bipartisan. We know there are numerous bills on the hill, both republicans and democrats to the value in reforming our criminal Justice System. And we are listening to. The attorney general is out there listening. He has been to atlanta, cleveland, and memphis. He is on his way to chicago, philadelphia, and oakland. We going to continue to listen to you. We ask you to reach out with new ideas. We want a partner with you, we want to make the system a better system. We want to ensure that we really have a country where all of us are equal under the law. I thank you. [applause] thank you, reverend austin. [indiscernible] [applause] [laughter] for our sound people, is it ok if i sit here . X feedback. Feedback. I hear it. I will get up and do what i need to do from up here. We are ready to start our conversation. We are really pleased to be able to talk to offer you a fiveminute women with the level of expertise that they have. Weve talked about how we wanted to flow, and we thought a lot of youre like us, lord bored with having talking heads sit and read from prepared remarks. We thought a ushaped table would help us to see each other, and have a conversation. If you have question, tweet your questions about hastag nbcslalc38. First we have the lady of texas, the queen of the texas legislature. Representative Senfronia Thompson is with the texas house, and is the longest serving women and africanamerican in texas history. She has been a champion for the underserved in the underrepresented. She has authored bills on racial profiling, to mr. Violence, and the hate crimes act. Next, we have dr. David klinger. He is our researcher, who is going to tell us all we need to know and give us the data to back that up. Released the source of the data to back it up. He is a professor of criminology, and criminal justice at the university of missouri st. Louis, and Senior Research fellow at the luis foundation. He has worked as a Police Officer in los angeles, and redmond washington. He has written on the issues of on the issues of arrest, practices, and use of force and terrorism for the last 10 years. Next to that is chief john dixon, iii. We were teasing him that he came in his uniform so we know he means business. We will listen to what he has to say. He is with the Petersburg Police in petersburg, virginia. He previously served the Richmond Community for over 24 years, and had a chance to experience all aspects of policing. His passions are in the area of community engagement, use engagement, and improving the overall quality of life and neighborhoods. He is also the immediate past president of the National Organization of black Law Enforcement executives, known as noble. Then we have representative deborah barry, who is championing legislation to take lethal weapons from convicted domestic abusers, keep children safe from online predators, and educational reform. Lastly, but certainly not least, we have a new be on the panel. A freshman legislator, Emmanuel Chris welch, who is been serving in the Illinois Legislature ends january 2013. Since january 2013. He has authored and passed legislation on reducing Gang Violence in communities in schools, he also served as Legal Counsel for various School Districts and municipalities. Lenin mention a couple of ground rules. Each panelist will have five minutes to make their opening comment. We will go in order with each panelist. Afterwards, i hope that the conversation i will begin a conversation with our panelists. Later on, we will open it up for q a. There are cards that were in your seats. If you dont have a card, raise your hand, and a staff member will bring a card to you. You dont have to wait until the very end to write your question or submit your question. If you are like me, you probably want to write it as soon as it comes to you, because you might forget it. But feel free to put the question on an index card, and submit it. They will respond to those questions at the very end. We want to make sure that your phones or silence, that you keep your side conversations to yourself, and finally, if you would rather tweet your questions, we would ask that you please tweet any questions to hashtag. We are ready to start. Are you ready . All right. Misty miss t. If showtime. Its showtime. When you have been in legislation this long, you are flexible. I bet you can hear me now. I want to welcome you to taxes. You have been welcomed by my colleague. Welcome you to taxes texas. I want to take this opportunity to thank my colleagues, representative Helen Giddings and the senator for luring you to our state and being so successful in doing that. Im serving the legislature here for some 42 years. I had a whole lot of other things that could have been doing. But i enjoyed my stay in the texas letters later. Legislature. Im single, im independent, i have a job, i work, make my own money. [laughter] but there are persons in our society who cannot afford to hire a lobbyist, to come up to the state house and advocate for themselves. Those are the little dogs. I like to look out for the little dogs. Those people dont feel like they have anybody to take care of their needs, their wants, and their desires. Sometimes you want to say, hell, i dont be bothered with this damn bill. Why did they bother me with this . But after you listen to this person, in you listen to their needs and cries and hurt, you cant afford to let them walk out the door without giving them some help. I worked on a hate crimes bill in texas. Let me give you the backdrop. We have a bill in texas that if you knock down a fence and kill a chicken, a pig, a cow, or a bat, you can get a thirddegree felony and go to the penitentiary. It sounds like a joke, but it is a truth. But the residents the legislation was resistant and being able to force people to face the fact that hate crime existed within the state. And that the life of a human being was less valuable than that chicken. And that pig, and that calvin you might have asked that we run into a fence and killed, and get a penitentiary in texas. We had a man who lived in jasper, texas. Going home, minding his own business, not emitting any crimes. Two white guys decided to change him behind the truck chain in behind a truck and pull him behind the truck until they had dismembered his entire body. He was so dismembered, his family could even successfully bury him. They went to the funeral home to take a suit, the man says there is no need. We cant even fit the body in a suit, because we have body parts. We passed that bill in taxes because we had a hate crime bill that would not pass constitutional muster. The biggest obstacle was the did not want people with Sexual Orientation to be a part of that protection. I know you feel like me. America ought to be good on its promises and protect all of its citizens. And then we pass the bill on racial profiling, driving while you are black. And one of the things i want to tell you, the reason we have such a problem with racial profiling is because we have institutionalized the fact that its all right to be able to profile people according to their gender, according to their race. And we are back in dread scott, whether you want to believe it or not. When the judge in the dreads got case says a man has no right, a black man has no right which are white man was bound to respect. This is something we still fight for today. We have a racial profiling bill, and i passed that bill. But the last session of the legislature, we passed a significant piece of legislation. By saying to the district attorneys in the state, you cannot withhold exculpatory evidence we had a man who spent 25 years in prison, and they have the evidence he was not guilty of killing his wife, what he had to sit in prison for 25 years, until one day this evidence was discovered. The prosecutor withheld because they wanted a conviction. They already knew he was innocent. My time is up. [applause] dr. Klinger. Can you hear me . First of all, i want to thank everyone for coming in this morning. I think the panelists and the organization for inviting me here. I want to talk about two things that i think are really in a and two things i think they can help us deal with this critical issue of the use of deadly force by Police Officers in the united states. As a former Police Officer, i understand both sides of the equation. I have been talking with the chief about this issue. I think that one of the ways that they legislators can make an impact on what Police Officers are doing is Pay Attention to the training that is going on in your state, about a particular issue. And that is the tactics that Police Officers are trained in. One of the problems, in some of the recent events weve seen on tape, is Police Officers are doing what we call getting into close, too fast. What happens when Police Officers are into close, too fast to individuals, they dont have as much time, they cant think as quickly. It leads to unfortunately, some tragedies. One of the things that is important in your state, theres going to be some type of we typically call Police Officer standard in training. A postassociation that has power to mandate the type of training officers get in the academy, and then inservice training. If we can spool up legislation to get more training for officers about how they need to enter interactions with people, we might be able to reduce the number of Police Shootings. If we reduce the number of Police Shootings, we are on a better path. This isnt necessarily a black white issue, its an american issue. We need to make sure that american Police Officers across all 50 states are really trained. The second thing, as gilda mentioned, about the data regarding how often Police Officer skill citizens in the night to in the united states. We have three different data sets that are spread across different agencies in the federal government that tracks dead people, i. E. People killed by the police. The Senate Just Passed the death in custody reporting act, which is a step in the right direction in terms of Getting Better data. What we have to understand is most of the time when Police Officer shoe, they dont kill somebody. The bullets either miss or the individual issued survives. By focusing on dead bodies, we are missing the big picture of the use of deadly force by the police. I working with jim behrman, the president of the Police Foundation in washington dc. We are putting together a pilot study, where we hope to get a by and for many of the major police arms across the country, already the Los Angeles Police department is working with me and working with jim to put together a serious Data Collection program that will permit us to track every single time a Police Officer discharges his or her firearm. I would ask you to use your leverage as state legislators to assist us, the Police Foundation of the University Missouri st. Louis, and other entities that want to get this up and running, to go ahead and give us your support. I think these two things, in terms of improving Police Tactical training and improving the Data Collection, so we can really know the scope of the issue right now, we honestly dont have a clue. We have a baseline in terms of dead bodies, but we dont know what lies above that in terms of many people who were killed by the police are not counted in official statistics. We have no clue about how many people are wounded by police gunfire. We have even less of a clue about how people are shot at and missed. I would encourage you, from a pragmatic perspective, to try to use your power to leverage these two issues. Improving Police Training, and getting a more robust Data Collection system for the use of deadly force by Police Officers in the united states. Thank you. [applause] thank you. Chief, you want to talk . Government hear me can everybody hear me . Its a pleasure to be here among such an esteemed group. You guys are the ones that make the laws and make it happen. We enforce those laws that you make. I want to make that really clear. This is so important to be here, and to have this mesh of individuals here to be able to deal with this. So some real change can take place right here and now. Let me start out by saying that the vast majority of Law Enforcement officers working within our communities are wellmeaning, and goodhearted individuals who want to do the right thing. With that said, one incident of violence in our community is one too many. We all have to strive towards bridging the gap between communities and communitys of color lawenforcement officers. Nelson mandela once said people respond in accordance, and how you relate to them. If you approach them on the basis of violence, thats how they will react. If you say we want peace, we we want stability, and we can then do a lot of things that will contribute towards the progress of our society. The problems in our communities did not happen overnight. And there is no one response to why it happened. It is going to take some time, and there is no cookiecutter solution. We have to look at an array of philosophical solutions. We have to educate our community. Both on voting, and not just voting on the process of voting. I cant sit here and tell anybody how they should vote, but educate yourself on what voting is, and how to do so. There is a push right now that a lot of people dont know, in criminalizing menthol cigarettes. By your response, i see you didnt know that. But there is a push on criminalizing menthol cigarettes, which will have an adverse effect in africanamerican communities. We need to be educated on those things, and be in front of it when these things happen in order to address it. We need to have transparency within our organizations. Transparency a heard mentioned earlier about body chemistry body camera certainly is one way to create transparency. I keep in mind, we need to have me and policies that address those issues as well. Those body cameras inside your house, when you are at your worst, will become viral. I see a lot of heads shaking. A lot of people havent thought about it that way. All of that stuff that goes on is now going to be on youtube and on the news, you will have an opportunity to see those things. People at their worst. If you have a Good Government job, you may want to look at that. [laughter] training for officers, as the good doctor mentioned, is important. We have to look at training. We have to look at how we train our officers. If we train them to be combative, guess what, you get combativeness. If you train them to be solution oriented, you get solution oriented processes. We have to stay focused on that. I would like to end this with something where do you want a star of solve this problem . Do you want to solve it with young black men in their backyard, or do you want to wait until the go to the graveyard . Until they go to the graveyard . [applause] good morning. Good morning. Hello . All right, talk louder. Thank you. I would like to thank nbcsl for the opportunity to be here today and be on this panel that is an issue dear to me. I get too emotional we talk about criminal justice, and the disproportionate impact on immunities of color. Or just any kind of injustice, a kind of gets me stirred up. Im going to try to be a lady appear, and really get to the point of some things. As representative cobbhunter talked about, and me being involved in aid to mr. Violence bill a Domestic Violence bill that had to do with protective orders if anyone had a temporary protective order or a permanent protective order, the judge, the courts could say that you there was a big issue. Representative miller, when i dollars my cali down there too. That i want to ignore knowledge my colleague down there too. That bill would say any kind of weapon could be rude removed from the home. It was a may, and you know how those maze work. Mays work. That bill came out of a woman in one of the rural areas that was really threatened and killed by her husband, or whoever that was who terrorized her throughout their marriage. That bill kind of came to fruition. Another thing though, if i can go back and quickly make another point on some of the committees that i have served on. This is very important. Going into my seventh term, i have served on Public Safety. Public safety is the committee where we get a lot of issues related to policing, things like that. Those kind of bills. I was fortunate enough to really have firsthand looks at a lot of the bills that came through their, that affected communities of color. And judiciary committees also is another area where some of those prosecutor prosecute in attorney bills come through. Another bill that was very important that i was able to get involved in was the internet predator bill. Im also a person who, of all my types of bills i introduce, i always represent as we heard from her presented of thompson, and probably all of you. Representative thompson. We all have the same kind of heart here. What i found was with the influx of internet, there has been a lot of online predators out there kind of praying on our children. Preying on our children. People posing as kids. That bill went into effect in iowa that would keep kids safe from online predators. Another important bill that is quite appropriate for today was the afterschool programming bill. I know back when introducing legislation, and that bill, after euros of years of working hard, republicans were in the majority, it took many years to get that legislation. Get something in the iowa code that would say that would allow churches or any kind of organization that schools even who had an interest in providing afterschool programs for children there would be funding for the state available. The reason that is important is because doing during the times of 3 00 to 6 00 every day, kids are usually left at home by themselves or in. That is when children are involved in at risk behaviors, finding themselves involved in sexual activities, and he of at risk behavior. Any kind of at risk behavior. I will being a low risk state, both parents have to work to make ends meet, we found that was the first step in helping young people not get into the juvenile Justice System. In iowa, i think our black youth represent maybe 45 of those in the juvenile Justice System. And we know if you start out as a kid, and then it goes back to school, then it goes back to what is happening in the home. We hear those kinds of conversations too. I look forward to hearing what representative welch has to say regards the education system. If we do not Say Something to really help families in crises, in terms of children not having a safe place to be, then that is what we find. They start young getting into the system. I think i heard either representative cobbhunter or representative thompson talk about the fact that starts in school. Just how kids are looked at. I dont know if you have even walked into if you have children or grandchildren elementary schools, watch how they are being treated. I observed it in my granddaughters classroom. There is a little black a little black boy. The teacher was giving him more attention, and the boy was not doing anything for than anybody else. It goes back to a lot of factors as to what is going on. Its definitely systemic, its a systemwide problem. It starts on every level, and we definitely need to do something to address this issue on all levels. Thank you. [applause] good morning, everyone. I am both honored and humbled to be here this morning. Im honored because i am the freshman appeared. And im definitely humbled, being the chicago and chicagoan in dallas, we kept her a week after dallas kicked our butts in football. You guys have read a lot of headlines in the news that we see, it seems like weekly. Talking about the violence within our community. I wanted to give you three nuggets that i think we should a all take back to our respective chambers in our states, but i think can really help us from a policy perspective, address violence within our community. I think the first thing we all the to do, and we all need to demand as the caucuses in our respective states we need to demand that each one of our state provide an education to our kids. [applause] we need to stop expelling our kids on the street. When we expel our kids on the street, we are sending them from the schools straight to prison. These zerotolerance policies are not working. And as the gentleman from the white house dated this morning stated this morning, we really need to, from a legislative standpoint, start making the schools address student discipline in other ways. For the educators in the room, im not saying keep these bad kids in your classroom. There are some kid you have to remove them from the classroom setting because other kids within it want to learn, should be able to learn. But we should not have the first resort be to put kids on the street. In illinois, we are addressing that issue in senate bill 3004. My senator is leading that fight in the other chamber. We are going to get it right come january. We are going to pass a bill that addresses when a school can and cant expel a kid onto the street. They need to first offer alternatives, because we want to keep those kids in the school system, and not put them in our criminal system. The second thing we need to do is we need to give people who have made a mistake a second chance. People deserve a job. They need to be able to take care of their families. Im proud of the illinois legislative black caucus just led the fight to pass a bill in illinois, house bill 5701, which bans the box. You cannot put on implement applications the question whether you have been convicted of a criminal offense. You cant even inquire about a criminal offense until a person has interviewed and been offered a job. People shouldnt be excluded from the opportunity to get gainful employment just because they made a mistake in the past. This new law goes into effect january 1, and i guarantee you black and brown people are going to benefit directly from banning the box. The third thing we need to do, and its a bill i went to fight on last year, is we need to end the code of silence. In chicago, these gang bangers truly believe that snitches get stitches. We need to teach them it is cool to snitch. We need to teach them that it is cool to snitch. [applause] but we also need to provide them the necessary protections that go with that. In house bill 1139, i created in Witness Protection Program. The gang crime in Witness Protection Program. These folks know who committed the crime, the need to make sure they know who was going to do the time. Prosecutors can offer these folks who know what happened an opportunity to be put on a Witness Protection Program just like on the federal level. This isnt rocket science, we know what is out there. A lot of states do not have Witness Protection Programs. We are going to have to deal with that from religious leader perspective. We have to make sure it is budget for. From a legislative perspective. We have to make sure it is budgeted for. We need to have the protections for them. Thank you. [applause] thank you. Lets give all our panelists hand. [applause] lets direct a couple of questions to the panel. We have some that come from the audience. If you have a question, you have index cards, please feel free to write your question and submit it to us. I want to start, dr. Klinger, if i can come with you. Again, we know that emotion doesnt convince anybody. We are very much in today. What we are interested in hearing from you is is there any evidence of a link between Community Violence and Police Shootings . Is there data that just that . As indicated, we dont have a good idea of what is going across the country in terms of use of deadly force by the police, because we dont have the data set. A few years ago, the city of st. Louis gave me the opportunity to look in all of their officer involved shooting case files. Suspects were killed by police gunfire, suspect the were wounded, and situations were officer shot but nobody was struck by gunfire. What i my colleagues did was we were able to map the locations where the shootings occurred. What we found is there is a powerful relationship tween levels of violence and neighborhoods and the numbers of Police Shootings. As violence increases in the city of st. Louis the least, that is a thing that is driving the use of deadly force by the police. That is something we always have to keep in mind when we are looking at this important question of the use of force by police. It is largely, at least in st. Louis, a reaction or response to violence in the community. Chief, do you want to respond to that question . I think again, there is no cookiecutter answer to any of this. What we have to do is focus on casebycase, we have to use evidencebased data in order to approach this problem. We have got to know what is really happening, so we can improve it. With that, we have to keep that feeling part in there. We deal with communities and feelings. These folks arent sitting there with all the scientific evidence, they are sitting there reacting to how they feel about whatever took place. We have to keep that in mind as we approach these issues. Tank you, chief. Thank you, chief. Representative welts, welch, we are really interested in what you are doing in chicago. Because of your work, we want to know if you think there is a real solution to curbing violence in our communities, based on what you have been doing . I do think there is a real solution to curbing violence. The real solution starts early on. It starts with education. Thats why i spent 12 years on the school board. In most of our states, we are not Adequate Funding education. Illinois, ranked 49th out of 50 of how to fund our schools. We could do better, we should do better, we have a demand that we do better. A demand that we properly fund our schools. Schools cant keep the kids in school, the ones they are expelling, theyd a lot of keep them because they need smaller class sizes. There is a whole lot of reasons why schools are trying to find ways to get rid of kids. Because they cant afford to educate them. As a body, we need to demand we adequately fund our schools. We need to encourage parents to get into the schools. Parents are not the enemy, they are the friends. My first bill as a legislator last year was a bill called bring your parents to school day. House bill 129. Its exactly what it sounds. Illinois schools are now required to offer once a year, an opportunity for parents to go to school with their kids, attend class, go to gym, eat the lunch. Get the parent into the school, and let them see what is happening. Once we start focusing on education and demanding that it is funded adequately, we are really going to address the issue of the violence in our community. Yes maam. We also have to provide good jobs for those parents to be able to afford to go to those schools, to see about their children. You can take a lot of pressure out of a family if they are able to adequately support themselves. Then they have an opportunity to be able to look at those other things that they can address, like what their kids are doing in school. If you are able to pay your bills and have a few pennies left over, you can do a whole lot of things. We have a responsibility making sure the good jobs are provided. We call this a great nation to everyone else around the globe. This is a Good Opportunity to talk about a bill i tried to introduce, as representative cobbhunter knows, that would allow parents were working time off work. Again, with i would being a lowwage state, parents cant afford to not work. Its not that they dont care or love their children, but when you are at work, and then it strict and you cant get away, that is a problem. And that is why the bill i introduced if i can say, representative welch, you must be in a democratic Led Legislature to get all these things done. Thank you for clarifying. I agree with the discussion as it relates to parents needing to be there. But again, in our state and others, we cant afford to leave. There is nothing to protect them from losing their jobs. Without getting some sort of repercussion for doing so. I truly think the great supplemental bill to the bring your peers to school day is a bill that allows parental leave. We already allow if the malay fmla types of leave. Whether its four hours a year that they can leave work without penalty to go visit their kids in school. A lot of states already have those on the books. The ones that dont, we really should consider rental leave act. Parental leave act. The point you made about the new magic bullet, Silver Bullet to address this issue. In most of states, weve seen legislation dealing with body cameras being offered. How do you respond to those colleagues who take your point about the violation of the privacy issue, but respectfully suggest to you that yeah, that is true, but we have to make sure we have an accurate record of what is actually transpired . Do you think that the notion of privacy overrides the concern of the publics part about wanting to know exactly what happened in that interaction with the officer . I think one is clearly we want more transparency within our police organizations. I dont think thats a doubt in anybodys mind. I just say what you ask for. We need to unders be careful what you ask for. We need to understand having that transparency opens up that door where privacy, you have to consider if your privacy is more important than knowing what is happening there. I have been in many calls that you walk in the door and people are usually at their worst when the police are in their dealing with whatever those issues are. Those are things that i know think the general public wants to go public. There has to be a part of it. We are dealing with situations where people are arguing, fighting, whatever is going on in the privacy of their home. Police officers are coming in to interact and deal with those issues. Now, thats where it stops. Once these cameras going to play, thats not where it stops. Let me let you followup. And let me ask you about your area of expertise in training. One of the concerns that those of us who represent communities of color here a lot is the lack of cultural competency on the part of Law Enforcement officers. As you respond to the chief, would you also address the competency issue, and any other issue involving Law Enforcement training that we ought to be aware of . Absolutely. I want a second the remarks that the chief just made. When i was a young Police Officer, i was intervening into ribs and process. The women were in the process of being raped. If we were to have body cameras, there is a law that says that people cannot get access to this, these us scenes of these two women literally we are rescuing them from the hands of rapists, that would be on the internet. That is wrong, wrong, wrong. As state legislators, you have the opportunity to pass laws, not just make a policy statement, but pass a law that says this type of information will not be subject to requests, no matter what the case might be. I dont know the details, that that is something that needs to be done. Victims of Violent Crimes should not have to be subject to derision that will come by having their information pop up on youtube. I am with the chief 100 on that. Not just about you on your worst day, but crime victims. In terms of cultural competency, i think that one of the Critical Issues that people need to understand the chief and i have talked about this. Him and him often times, and czar framed as black and white about policing. Things are framed as black and white about policing. Its blue, the blue uniform versus citizen sometimes. When you do figure out how to train officers understand two things. They need to identify with the citizens, no matter what that this is particular background might be. And understand the citizen has an expectation on the lines of what mr. Austin was talking about, that all people be treated equally and fairly. The second point about that is obviously, there will be cultural differences. Black, white, asian, hispanic, whatever the case might be. Within the black committed, there is different subcultures. It is really vital that Police Officers understand who it is they are interacting with. They get training in the and academy, and they get training in service so they understand the community they are policing. That is really vital. That isnt something that stops at the academy, it has to be ongoing in terms of inservice training and having people from different backgrounds. Perhaps even coming to roll calls and making presentation. There is a lot of room for that. The takeaway from the whole conversation about body cameras, for those of us out there looking to introduce legislation, is lets look at it from various angles. You arent necessarily saying dont do it, you understand its not a Silver Bullet that we think it is. And we need to engage others in Law Enforcement, the privacy community, all of those to make sure that in our effort to help, we arent inadvertently creating something. I want to go to the chief, because you asked a question. You raised is something that leads to one of the questions that came from our audience. And that is your point about the thin blue line. Chief, what has come out in all of this conversation has been some friction in the eyes of some, with Police Unions and communities of color. Could you just give the members of our audience some idea of how we engage Police Unions, as a part of helping us come up with something that will work . The first step in that, everybody has to understand everybody elses side. My experiences lead me to believe certain things and react in certain ways. I tell people often, when i am dealing with these issues i deal with them with a couple of different hats on. One, from a Police Chiefs perspective, obviously. Two, from a black man. Three, from a black man who has a black son. All of those issues are important to me. And so i have, i guess, the pleasure of understanding each piece of what goes on. Police unions understand they are put in place to look at it from a police perspective. They approach it from that perspective. Not a wrong perspective, just their viewpoint. What we all have to do is sit down at that table we should have 19yearolds and 20yearolds to discuss these. Because that is who it affects. And their perspective is going to be different from ours. So we have to engage in a roundtable with everybody involved to focus on solutions. Thank you, chief. Did you have something you wanted to say . You know when i think about , what happened in ferguson and in new york, i think about the police side of things. There definitely needs to be more training. You know i look at both of those , incidents and say, are those officers trained on when you use certain levels of force . Clearly Excessive Force was used in both of those instances. They have to be trained early escalate force. I am speaking because in my role as a lawyer from municipalities i represented many Police Officers. Many had gotten it wrong and many had gotten it right. Those had had gotten it right had been trained from the outset. As a legislator we need to , address this issue. In a lot of states, Police Departments are required to report data on what race you are when you are stopped. We need to make sure every time force is used, Police Officers are required to report it. Whatever force they have, i guarantee you, if they know they are going to report it they are , going to think twice about the force they will use. Representative let me ask you , this. You mentioned a piece of legislation you have done in illinois, dealing with protection for gang members. Would you talk to us about what you see as a solution in addressing the code of silence . The code of silence that is in Law Enforcement . I dont want to put our to Law Enforcement experts on the hot seat by having them address it. But if you, because of your legislation, have something specific you want to share about how you see us addressing this notion within Law Enforcement not the snitch piece, but within Law Enforcement, about abuses that dont go reported within their ranks. And then we will let our Law Enforcement experts respond. Is my question clear . Understood clearly. As someone who represents Police Officers, i understand it. Its just nature we want to protect our brothers and sisters. And we have to train Law Enforcement just like we are going to train the kids. If you know of someone doing something illegal, it is not cool to try to protect them. They have to snitch on their brothers and sisters too, if they are doing something wrong. The only way you are going to root out the bad apples is to tell it. You teach that early. Teach it in the academy. They are teaching that brotherhood. Teach them if somebody is doing something illegal, it is wrong and im going to let someone know you are doing something wrong. I know we have two lawyers on the panel. But i am going to throw this one out, and anybody who wants to respond can feel free to respond to it. That is this notion of grand juries, and how all of that works. Given the lack of indictment, in cases which to a lot of us appear very clearcut, what do you say to anybody about what we about these lapses we are seeing from prosecutors and solicitors when it comes to presenting information to grand juries for indictment . We have two lawyers appear. The first one is going to Say Something. I have a short answer. Several years, i carried a bill to have the attorney inside of the room in the grand jury, and not just the prosecutor by themselves. And i really believe that is one of the solutions to the problem. Or pete that again. Repeat that again. I believe we have the other attorney there with the prosecutor. Im not saying the prosecutor is not being diligent and not living up to his code of conduct. I just think this is a good safety measure. I have tried to pass that bill for 10 years in texas. I know you all the look at me crazy. Past one and allen. It took me 20 years, but i got it done. I believe this is a safety net, that that would be a good thing in there. I dont believe that lawyer would be disrupted. Because the role of that person in the grand jury would be restricted, but they would have an opportunity to see actually what is happening and how the dialogue or the questioning is going on. Thank you so much. As representative welch gets ready to respond, in addition to what she said there are some who are now calling for a special prosecutor to be called automatically when a case happens so you dont get into , this issue of conflict of interest, and all of that. Do you support that . What do you think that would do . I wholeheartedly support that. I think that is the solution. You cannot have folks who work closely together every day, who have developed a special bond of working together, investigating one another. The perfect example was the prosecutor in ferguson. In that incident, there should have been an outsider appointed as a special prosecutor to look into that situation. Every lawyer who has gone through law school knows you can indict a ham sandwich. And somehow this ham sandwich didnt get indicted in ferguson, and that is because of the bias of the prosecutor. And i think if you appoint a special prosecutor from the outset, you would have avoided the whole incident. One thing we want to remind a room full of elected of fischels as a possible solution as well is, change the person whos in the role of prosecutor. You know lets not forget we are , elected officials and elections matter. And who wins matters. So we want to make sure we come up with all of the solutions and we dont overlook the process that has brought all of us to this room. David, you want to Say Something . I do not know the details of what is going on in wisconsin in the last couple of years. There is basically a threepronged bill, but one has already been passed. The michael dell act. To make a very long story short, that is one place to look, in terms of another way to think about how it is states can structure these very critical reviews of officer involved shooting. That is one place you guys could take a look. Im going to start with my sister from iowa. Any of you can feel free, and i know i keep harping on this. You raised a point to our democratic colleague and democraticcontrolled state about getting stuff done. And so can you kind of talk to us about your suggestions, for those of us who live and work in totally red states where your , ability to decide the outcome of a legislative issue is going to be how do we talk to our colleagues who are frankly just dismissive in addressing this whole business of Police Violence . And what do they tend to do is revert to the Rudy Giuliani of thought and say, it is black on black crime. If you people would stop killing each other, we would all be ok. How do you talk to colleagues on the other side of the aisle who believe that view . First of all i totally , dismiss that black on black crime crap. Alwayst is because i say to people, crime happens where you live. White on white crime happens where you live. Asian people kill asian people or commit crimes against them. The whole black on black crime thing, lets just not say that anymore. Because i think that is a way to continue to keep the issue separate from the real issue of the fact that there is some serious issues going on with some Police Officers across this entire country. So dismiss that. It is interesting you ask me that question, because i was my first i term, introducing my first bill on racial profiling, and the chairman of that committee was a republican representative. I walked up to him in my little, young, naive way he actually walked up to me and said, im not going to run your bill. I said to him, why not . He said, because i dont believe racial profiling exists. And so i sat him down and said to him, here are the reasons why it exists. And i think for the first time in his life somebody explained to him that racial profiling exists. Of course, the bill did not go anywhere because him being a former trooper, he honestly didnt think he could get his colleagues to support it. And so it took me years and years to really work on that person. But to answer your question, how to really work across the aisles and get the other side to at least listen, it is very important. And this is really something for freshmen legislators. Just being able to understand a couple of things first of business, no permanent friends, only permanent interests. You have to be patient, you have to understand that. As you said, representative thompson it took 20 years, you say . It took five years for that afterschool legislation to codify. Things take time. You have to really be able to communicate with people, be open and honest about things. Once you get to know people you all know this, those of you who have been around a long time. Once they really understand who you are, why you believe in these things, once you have educated them on these issues, it is much easier for people to see the other side. Have dinner. You go golfing. You do whatever you have to do. I think once people understand that these issues are real, and that they also affect their communities afterschool programs it affects all , children. However, who is impacted by it the most . Africanamerican children and children of other minorities. It is about communicating. Thank you, representative. Dave dont take this the wrong , way. You are the only white boy up here, so you are the only one i can ask this question. I used to work in South Central los angeles. Used to being the only white boy. As the designated only one designated white boy . Is that what you said . All right. How can Tactical Training overcome deeply held fear, white Police Officers who are involved who are in some of these shootings of a black man. What can we do with a white Police Officer to get them to not be afraid of the brothers . I think the biggest thing is that most white Police Officers, at least the ones i work with, the gentleman and the ladies i know, arent afraid of black people. They do not look and say, holy mackerel, here comes bad stuff. There are some officers. There are two prongs. Number one, why are you on the force if you are afraid of people you are going to be policing by virtue of your skin color, that is a problem. The next question is how do you overcome it for someone who might not be aware of it. I think what it boils down to is, you have to have Senior Officers who get it. White, black, hispanic, whatever. Work with these young officers to help them understand that everybody is the same. It is just the skin color is different. That is what it boils down to. It goes back to the previous question in terms of cultural sensitivity, to understand there are some differences across cultures. Big deal. I must respectfully disagree with the comment on black on black prime. It is very true that crime is an intraracial phenomenon. No doubt about that. The problem is black on black , crime is remarkably higher than levels of white on white crime and hispanic on hispanic crime. For example, in st. Louis, missouri, where i come from 90 , of all of the murder victims are black and about 90 plus of them are killed by other blacks. We cant not look at that disproportionate interracial violence among black communities. What is going on in st. Louis is not remarkably different from other places. I think we agree about a lot but i have to disagree about that point. Quick thank you, chief. Thank you, chief. [applause] i do need to rather respectively disagree, because in terms of the disproportionality of it, i do agree with that. But i think, again, when you how many of you walk up to you and say, why is it black people kill more black people . Percentagewise, we probably to kill but the notion that we are the only ones killing is not a good assessment of the situation. Therefore ok. Thats kind of my point when i say that. [indiscernible] all i wanted to say is im not arguing that white people dont kill white people, hispanic thats not true. It im saying is disproportionate involvement of black on black crime. And let me tell you from a human perspective. When i was a policeman 30some years ago in South Central los angeles i used to have to ride in the back of ambulances with young black kids who got shot by other young black kids. Why was i writing in the back of the ambulance . Waiting for a dying declaration. So that i could go into court if thisperson died and say, person, just before they passed, told me it was this person or whoever it was to shot him. That is no fun. As a designated white boy, i want to let you know, just for that question i do want to let you know that Police Officers, when we are trying to save lives and trying to protect people, im sure there are some racists out there. We have got 8000 officers across the country. There are some knuckleheads. But the vast majority of the men and women i used to work with streets, we are interested in protecting people, and we hate having to take that ambulance ride. It really rends our souls. You want to Say Something . You got the mic. A i just want to clear up couple of things. He took your mic, baby. We have to look at what is going on. We talk about the fear that exists, and i have to say, i think it is not as much fear as it is a lack of understanding. You know, we have to push out. Im a believer that the Police Department should look like your community. It should match your community. [applause] what that does is bring an understanding. If i grew up there i have had people say white folks hang outside the projects. It is hot in there. That is really the bottom line. They are cinderblock walls. In the middle of the day it is burning up, so you hang outside. It is not a negative, it is a condition. If you have never been there, you do not understand the conditions. Chief thank you so much. ,we are kind of getting i can tell we have met our goal of making this conversational, because you are all being conversational out there. So we are going to the questions are coming, so i dont want you to think im picking on the two of you, but all of them are like the four of us, so they are not interested in the four of us. Or at least these three. No offense to you all to yall, ok . All of them think they have important legislation that is tha bomb. Of this is a question for either of you who want to answer about training in our criminal Justice Academy and police academies. Can you speak to us as legislators about what we need to be looking for in academies . Academies that are responsible for training our Police Officers . What are your suggestions about things we ought to be looking for and how we engage our criminal justice and Police Training academies . Without question, sensitivity training. We have to understand what is going on out there. The number one thing that is hitting the news everywhere is how officers are responding. Im not going to get into the details of what anybody else believes, but here is the issue. It is happening. We need to figure out how to stop it. One way is to train our officers in a different way. How we respond, definitely. When you pull up two feet in front of somebody who is , something be armed is wrong tactically with that. What is not the way i would tell any of my officers to respond. The same thing in understanding cultures, we have to understand i shared earlier where it is a church van pulled over by the police and it was full of holiness people. When they started reacting and praying and doing things the officer was uncomfortable with, he called in more units because he didnt understand folks laying hands on each other. [laughter] we need to understand he came from a background where that is unusual. So, you know we have to train , our officers to deal if i walk on the scene i may tell a group of young men, you aint got to go home and the neighbors respond accordingly, well you where is somebody else may say, get off the corner. Of negativeome kind reaction. A lot of training has to be this sensitivity on how to deal with different communities. Thank you, chief. Dr. Klinger we have questions , for you. Go ahead. I am sorry. I did not see you. Go ahead. Im listening and i just want to stress the importance of cultural understanding. But i dont think that is a reason to want to kill people. I mean, just because you dont understand i think a lot of it is also just stereotypes and things that are ingrained in the fabric of our psyche of this country. And there is just no excuse. And so i relayed we just have to deal with that part of it. You, you know how Darren Wilson describes he saw a big black, what did he say . Go ahead. There are two points i want to make. Number one is i dont know a , single Police Officer that wants to kill anybody. I have done it [audience clamor] ive done it and it is no fun. Let me tell you from personal experience. I have interviewed 300 Police Officers across the country, black, white, hispanic, they are not looking to shoot people. I promise you that. Are there knuckleheads out there . Are there some bad cops . Im not going to argue that point. I am going to tell you the vast , majority of Police Officers do not want to pull the trigger. They dont. Part of the evidence is how infrequent it happens. I just want to point that out. Second thing is, if you spend your time talking to Police Officers who have done the work, i have not talked the chief about this particular issue i have been in situations where without a doubt i could have legally pulled the trigger. But i opted not to at risk to myself and risk to my partner, because we value human life. That is the story of most Police Officers. Most Police Officers are quite restrained. I bet the chief could tell you stories of Police Officers who could have shot, but held their fire. Part of this conversation has to include the understanding that the police are not looking to gun people down. Thank you, so much. And we we have hit upon something that evokes passion in all of us, but i want to remind the audience that part of what we want to do here is give you data so you dont have to do like you just did, and that is react emotionally. Because when you become of cases, and a lot about some of these things, you lose your ability to persuade or even allow the person you are talking to to understand the point you are making. We have time for one more question. I want to say for the record that representative welsh there , was a question about snitching and how with your legislation i dont want you to answer it. Im just telling the audience, because you know, a group of politicians, i do not want you, when we finish up here, you did not answer my question. Im just saying what is left on the table, so somebody is going to come up to you and ask you about the legislation and how somebody who does that ought to feel when they see a Police Officer. There was also a question we didnt get to. Any of you can feel like answering. It is about psychological testing, and what role that plays. Whether we ought to make it a Public Policy issue as far psychological testing. But because we want you to have the ability to come up here at address your questions to our panelists, we will now move to our closing conversation. And representative welch we are , going to start with you. This is your chance to make sure audience oneh our point that you wanted to make. I want to thank everyone for coming out and hearing us. I think it is important that we ourmber, as the leaders in respective states, we have to demand that we adequately educate each and every one of our children. We have to demand that every person who has made a mistake in their life is given a second chance. We have to demand people who know they have committed crimes, whether it is gang bangers or Police Officers, that they tell. We have to demand that. If we demand it, it will all happen, and we will decrease violence in our respect to respective communities. Thank you. I guess i would leave everyone with this i support police. As i said, i served on Public Safety for probably 10 years of my political career. If you arelieve that not protecting and serving, you dont need to be on the force. I mean we are all trying to do , what we can to raise our children, make sure they are safe, but to be in fear for the safety of your children every day of their lives, particularly male children i refuse to live that way. In fact im even afraid for my , granddaughter. So i think we have to make sure that we continue to educate. As legislators we need to have the discussion in our communities. Policy is critical in all of this. Make sure the policy is addressing the issue. And you are right, representative. When we get emotional about this stuff we react like the folks on social media. I mean, we just, we do. So i just think it is important to really stay above it as much as we can and make sure we set the example to really make it a better state, but do not ignore the fact that these things are happening and they need to be addressed. Thank you. You know i saw that emotional , response to that. I tell you and i am hoping im going to stay back so we can have further conversation. Because i think it is so important, especially you guys, at least have your responses, what we call evidencebased. Understand what really exists. Because part of why we have things that affect us, ancillary laws that affect us is because , we dont take the time to look at what happens here and now that affects later on. And we have to make sure we focus on that. Theree to make sure that is some understanding. And then whatever your response is after that that is fine. ,you have to have that understanding. I will tell you, the vast majority of Police Officers are not out here to hurt people. I have been in this business over 30 some years. Have i fired officers that have . Yes. Will i continue . Yes. No Police Officer wants a bad Police Officer around him. Because the issue then becomes that guy has information on me and my family that i do not want the bad guys to get a hold of. It is some pieces in there that a drug dealer would love to get the information that he has on me to have some kind of negative response. So, you know that is the vast , majority. Do we have bad apples . Yes. Should we get rid of them . Yes. Should they go to a penitentiary if they commit a crime . Yes. But we need to have our focus where that is, and not do a blanket emotional response on addressing these issues, because to be theis going longterm alternative . What is going to happen next . Who are you going to get to be Police Officers then . Keep that in mind. I echo what the police said. I want to add, the importance of the two things i talked about initially, we need to get officers trained up because of an awful lot of the bad incidents come not because the officer intends to do something bad, but because he or she made a tactical blunder. The other thing you need to know is, most of the time an honest review of what a Police Officer does when he or she uses deadly force will show that what the officer did was correct. We are looking at one tale of a distribution. We need to focus on that. We need to not let bad cops doing that things get away with it. Without a doubt. Second thing is i would encourage you to get behind the effort to develop a National Database on the use of deadly force by Police Officers. As the chief has mentioned multiple times we need , evidencebased policies, evidencebased training. The only way we can get those Training Programs up and running is when we have the evidence. We desperately need that. There are many members of the lawenforcement Community Around the community that want this evidence. We are going to move forward on that, and hopefully i can count on yall to be part of the support system that will buttress this. And i spent eight years in texas. That is why i said yall. It has been delightful to be here this morning. I hope that as an organization that we would continue to Stay Together on this issue and not let it fall within the hands of a few to carry the burden. That we will work toward policies together as a unit, so that all americans will be able to benefit from the full protection of the laws of this country regardless of race, Sexual Orientation or ethnicity. Well, we want to just really on behalf of nbcsl, not that politician using we, we more than me want to thank yall for being here and am interested in having yall stay around because there are questions people have. The takeaway wed like to leave we are in thethis south so those of you who are from the west and the northeast, you are just going to have to bear along with us as i put to you in southern speak what we want you to takeaway from this and quite frankly the bottom line is wed rather see a sermon than hear one, meaning walk the walk, not just talk. Bottom line is this is a very difficult problem. We recognize that. Hope you remember we said we are not trying to provide solutions here today. We are simply trying to get you to think about what you need to do, evidence based, evidence based. Go back to your states, talk to crour Police Training academies. Talk to your educators in the community, talk to everybody because we want you to connect the dots. Final comment from nbcsl get off your butts and do something when you go back home. Thank you so very much for being here. [applause] give the panel another round yall. [applause] q a turns r cspans 10. On his nneth fineberg work to calculate compensation for survivors of victims of the september 11 attack and the accidents caused by defective g. M. Air bags. On cspanight at 8 30 2 former white house officials alk about their books. Here is a look at some of the programs youll find Christmas Day. The lighting of the National Christmas tree and White House Christmas decorations with Michelle Obama and the lighting of the capitol christmas tree. And celebrity activists talk about their causes. And the bill of rights and the founding fathers. Venture into the art of good writing. See the feminist side of a superhero, wonder woman. On American History tv on cspan 3 the fall of the berlin wall with president george bush and bob dole. At noon fashion experts on first ladies fashion choices and how they represented the styles of the times in which they lived. And tom brokaw on his more than 50 years of reporting on world events. Thats Christmas Day on the cspan networks. Next the nonprofit moving picture institute which produces pictures dealing with human rights and corruption. Ronald reagan once said freedom is never more than one generation from extinction. We did not pass it to our children in the booed stream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on to them to do the same. Make no mistake, we are in a battle for the hearts and minds of our children. The battle for those who would diminish our freedoms. One of the battlefront is our popular culture. Movies, television shows, books, websites, and now social media that entertain our young. At the same time, teach them so much about the world around them. Theres no doubt the left understands this. The attitudes at the least progressives are all over modern popular culture. You could see it in the movies and tv shows being made, marketed, and sold in the 21stcentury america. Sometimes it seems you cannot go to the movies these days without being assaulted by left wing propaganda. It is ranked to see film that celebrates america and its exceptional heritage rather than denigrating it and highlighting its mistakes. Or a movie that portrays american soldiers as honorable heroes that they are rather than crazed sadistic killers. Is it too much to ask to debate a successful businessman as an important citizen in his community . Dont think these are unreasonable requests. I suspect neither does our guest speaker tonight, mr. Adam guillette. He has run a foundation called the moving picture institute or mpi for short. They great films that celebrate such conservative, bedrock principles as liberty, individual rights, limited government, and free markets. Mpi has helped launch the careers or support dozens of independent film makers who are passionate about telling stories about freedom. In short, mpi promotes freedom through film. He is a veteran and ongoing fight for liberty. In 2004, he joined the leadership faculty and spent several years traveling to help the organization in its mission to identify and train freemarket activists. Three years later, he launched the florida chapter, a nationwide Grassroots Organization whose 2. 3 million citizen activists advocate for limited government and for regulatory restraint. Something that is in short upply in the age of obama. N 2011, he joined the moving picture institute as Vice President of development. He has been featured on fox news channel, washington times, ational review magazine, and even the reliably left centered your time to generally Pay Attention to conservatives to accuse us of racism or sexism. He has been on the front lines of the battle over popular culture. Im delighted he is here to tell us how conservatives could you storytelling to advance the cause of could use storytelling to advance the cause of liberty. These help me welcome adam uillette please help me elcome Adam Guillette. Thank you, sir. How is everybody doing tonight . , down with the enthusiasm calm down with enthusiasm. Im Adam Guillette with the oving picture institute. We are promoting liberty because we believe film more effectively han any other medium could bring the idea of freedom to life. We do filmmaking. We do videos, all kinds of stuff. It boils down to storytelling. This is a tactic you could do whether you are a filmmaker or not. Effectively advance your believes for more effectively by telling stories them by simply listing the facts. For years since our side has been consistently viewed as a quantitative, logical folks, we think if we stack up the facts, we could prove we are right and victory will fall to us like right fruit ripe fruit from the vine. Does that work . No. The other side uses emotional appeals and we have been destroyed. We could make an argument of how Big Government health care is a terrible idea. It is a wasteful idea. Stuck up the facts and persuade people it is terrible. The left will come in and say what about that single mother over here. Are we going to do something for her . An entire debate has been lost. Storytelling, leading with emotional appeals is the effectively to reach people. People make decisions based on emotions and look at the facts to back up those emotions they have made. You choose to go out and splurge on a new car. That is an emotional decision you back up and say, well, i did x, y, and z. I think i justified the car. Unfortunately for young people and low information voters, these are folks who carefully study the political issues before making decisions. These are folks you could reach with storytelling. What is storytelling . What is not storytelling . Storytelling is not interviewing rover norquist in an office. It is usually policy officials being interviewed. Ive got nothing against offices. But that is not interesting. It is not entertaining. T wont bring in people. Storytelling is not stacking up ll of the statistics, facts, and graphs. People will fall asleep. Hey will turn and walk way. The only way i think you could get this to work is if you distract people like in clockwork orange and forcefeed information. We cannot do that. We are not in favor of that. What do we do instead . We end up ranting and complaining to our friends. We overwhelm them with information and typically come across like these people. With apologies to my glutenfree friends in the audience. That is how we end up coming across. I write. I have got the statistic. I know im right. ve got the statistic. When you go in and start arguing, instinctively the brain releases endorphins and they dig in their heels and they dont want to listen to you. There is a better way. It is storytelling. It is how we have created communicated ideas for thousands of years. Storytellers would travel it traveled from village to village. If that to memorize facts, that would be impossible. Instead they remembered stories and the main events would be conveyed through the stories. That is how ideas came across. Storytelling is a spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine goes down. We would never suggest you ignore the facts and information, but rather leave with a motion, leave with the information and supplement it with facts. This was perhaps best explained by the political philosophy philosopher using food as an example. You could eat a care with an onion ring that is exactly what storytelling is. You are entertaining them. Apturing them emotionally. Once you have captured them, deliver the ideas. We are not the first to come up with these strategies. This lady anyone seen her before . That is correct. When ayn rand wanted to write, you couldve written nonfiction. Hat instead she embraced storytelling. He wrote atlas shrugged, which still sells millions of opies today. She conveyed her political philosophy through a story instead of listing fax. When god wanted to write the definitive statement come he couldve written the 3,255,000 commandments. Dont think it would have spread like wildfire. Instead he wrote the bible and onveyed his Belief Systems through more stories. Becoming so successful it may have spawned sequels depending on who you ask. Even before that, you had things like the brothers grimm and Hans Christian anderson. Fables we learned as kids. They taught us through stories to advance morals. They didnt sit down and say share is good. Stealing is bad unless you are the government. Instead we learned fables and it was conveyed that way and it was much better at conveying the information. This is all obvious to us. Instead in terms of clinical tacticians, you see im sorry ad to look at that after you a usage James Camerons and Michael Moores of the world. They are leading in this ideology. I see jims cameron is a much bigger threat than michael moore. Michael moore you know what youre going to get in terms of ideology. James cameron makes mainstream films. You does alien, titanic, avatar. While you are there, subversively, he delivers his ideology. E delivers his ideology. You noticed titanic, every wealthy person on the boat except kathy bates is greedy, selfish, that people. Every single or person on the poor person on the boat is the most kindhearted person you have ever met in your life. When you look at alien and avatar, who are the villains . Corporate leaders. For the average american, they may never encounter a big corporate ceo. Theyre not running it to fortune 500 liters on the street. From 500 leaders on the treet. When you run a candidate for the presidency who has got a background in business, the guy i would rather live in a world where you have experience creating jobs, you are up five point based on that background. But they have been so powerful that it is the other way around. That is the power of culture. He complain about hollywood. Rather than ignoring an important tool, we should mbrace it. He best person on their side was referenced in the video. One of the most influential people today politically. And that more than half the you have never heard of the guy. He founded ebay. A Small Company that went on to success. Despite creating one of the biggest free markets, this guy ate with us ideologically. Instead of maxing out candidates and knocking on doors, instead of doing that, he created a Hollywood Production Company to reach the masses. These guys churned out film after film. By the way, Promised Land one of the best examples. A narrative film with matt damon. It wasnt a documentary. A film about fracking and how it is awful in all of that. True story. Anyone know who helped finance it . T got abu dhabi. What do they do . They could fund a film with an alist actor. Ll of these films to advance his beliefs. It has got explosions. T was really about how mandatory minimum sentences are a bad idea. He does back education reform. He supported waiting for superman. On nearly all the major issues, he is not one of us. They dont just release these films and hope for the best. No. The great social action campaigns for them. After you see an inconvenient truth, they direct you to the website. Takepart. Com. Immediately, they give you action items of what you could do from the comfort of your home to advance your beliefs based on the film you just saw. You could click here to send a message to your elected official and your district about how we need to take on climate change. You could click the policy from the sierra club. They are taking casual moviegoers and turning them into effective activist just like that. Doesnt matter if they were indoctrinated in schools or not. The people watching these films are affected emotionally. When they get home, they are engaging in activism for the other side. They are brilliant at it. I have never met a perfectly good idea that it wasnt willing to make my own. That is what we need to do. Amazing stories to be told on our side. Stories of entrepreneurs being blocked from achieving the American Dream by regulators. Stories of kids in inner cities being denied good education opportunities. These stories could be backed up. These are the stories that need to be told. That is what i challenge you to do tonight. When you are talking to friends about issues and speaking at an event and knocking on doors, challenger to embrace storytelling. Use those tactics instead of reciting facts. There are some key characteristics i would suggest. It is those great to have someone label. Relatable. Promote operative rights. We backed a film called battle for brooklyn about Eminent Domain. If you say to your apolitical friends some of us have them if you have got them, you say, id like to talk to you about imminent domain. What are they going to say . Ive got ago. No one what ive got to go. No one wants to hear that. Hats a film about a man named daniel. Wasnt a political guy. Wasnt a scholar. Probably a liberal. Big government bureaucrats were teaming up with political crony businessmen to seize his property in brooklyn bit Eminent Domain abuse and give it to a developer to build a basketball arena. Unbelievable story. He was the perfect hero. He was authentic. Not a political type. He is an everyman. It works for the same reason letters to the editor a more effective than editorials. We get irritated by editorials. There written by some left wing blowhard every time. Letters to the editor are far more widely read than the editorials you are short, to the point read than the editorials. They are short, to the point. A film about Property Rights and ndividual liberty. Do you want to see the trailer . Good answer. It is the next clip. You have no choice. If you are trying to get apolitical people interested in something, you have to make it excited. You have to go after them in things that will appeal to them. You cant use the things that appeal to us and say its Property Rights and constitution. If you make something conservative, it only going to be conserved by a conservative audience. If you want to go after low information voters and un12k50eudeds, you have to use appropriate bait for them that doesnt seem like its coming from an obvious point of view. Its so rare to have anything in pop culture to have beliefs. That is our one chance to get our beliefs in film. If you make it too political, youll alienate the audience that matters the most. This is our one chance to get our beliefs in philippine if you make it too political, youll alienate the film for the audience but if you make it too political, youll alienate the film for the audience. The exactly the last best hope for freedom in america. It was used by elected officials not exactly the last best hope for freedom in america. It was used by elected officials. They requested the film, which is excited. Another great way to get people to appreciate the message, another key characteristic is to have an underdog. Someone americans love underdogs. We want to support the little guy. When you think of Business Leaders, they are the little guys. They face regulators, taxes. They face awful government bureaucracies. We think of somebody like that. But to the average person, do they see steve forbes as an underdog . No. Even though you and i know big Business Leaders have everything oing against them. Average person doesnt see it that way. They dont see big Business Leaders as the underdog. When we want to support a film hat celebrate entrepreneurship nd what makes america great, the filmmakers found ultimate underdog to tell the story of. We backed this film called. Days about dog days in d. C. There a lot of food court vendors. They all have the same crummy selection of foods. That is no accident. All of these food cart vendors store their food carts at the same local businesses. If they dont buy their supplies, they jack up their rent. As a result, they got pretty much the same products. This guy lost his job, but had an idea. Great is this idea. What if i make highend food that i could sell to the food cart vendors they could sell to people . That wasted being only able to offer crummy hotdocs, they could that way instead of being only able to offer crummy hot dogs, they could sell highend food. If there has ever been and under. Com it is a single mother from an underdog, it is a single mother from another country. Who could be against that . Local government regulators. Naturally. Stopped issuing permits to new food cart entrepreneurs. Even as people i bet you they ere tired. You dont even issue permits. Every year there are less who carts available. If your guy trying to provide products, that could hurt