You better understand what this world is like and if you have that desire, and i surely surely hope you do, you can do worse than start with william shakespeare. [applause]. You can watch this and other programs on my netbook to be. Org. Cspan, created by americas Cable Television companies and brought to you as a public by your cable or satellite provider. Next on book tvs afterwards program, Manhattan Institute seated near fell, Heather Macdonald discusses policing in america. She is. She is interviewed by delores jonesbrown, law and plea science professor at john jay college, about her book, the war on cops, how the attack on law and order makes everyone laissez. Good afternoon, how are you today. A great, thank you so much. Im happy to have this opportunity to talk to about your new book, the war on cops. How the new attack on war makes everyone laissez. We know each other, we been on previous panels together, one of the first things i like to ask you is you discussed in the book about whether or not the criminal Justice System and police in particular a racist. What is your definition of racism . You dont give one in the book but you talk a lot about racism and being racist, how should we take your definition of racism . Guest i think it is hostile treatment towards a person on the basis of his skin color. Host okay. And a person who would be racist would do what . Guest make judgments about somebody based on skin color alone were even as part of other set of characteristics. But we hear from the black lives Matter Movement is cops are racist. That they are in minority neighborhoods and oppressing people in those communities, presumably it would seem really out of whim or caprice. There is never any explanation as to why officers would be in those communities. So i am simply adopting a phrase that is often bandied about by black lives matter protesters. I go to these protests and i see the signs that say racist killer cop, kkk cop. They are suggesting that cops are motivated by racial animus in the lawenforcement actions that they take. Host so you previously wrote a book, think the title is Something Like our cops racist. That that book was published at a time when there is an incident on the turnpike where for young man, three African Americans one latino male were shot by two Police Officers, they were were shot at 11 times. In the guilty plea that the two officers entered for having provided false information about who they were stopping on the turnpike, did those officers admit they had in fact targeted black and latino males and that they have been told to do so by superiors . Guest that was part of the guilty plea, you are right. But evidence that was more broadbased and statistical that the new jersey attorney general used to show disparities and stops did not take into account driving behavior. There is a study that was subsequently done by the same Statistical Organization that contributed to the Justice Department in new jersey attorney general that looked at driving behavior and found that blacks on the new jersey turnpike were speeding at twice the rate of white drivers and that the disparities at least over 90 Miles Per Hour were even greater. It is not clear that officers can even see the race of drivers at night. In fact, stops done by radar near the same disparities that are driven overwhelmingly by driving behavior. Spee1 im a former prosecutor. One of the things i love to do at trial is to use the phrase, by your own admissions, when i had defendants on the stand for crossexamination. So should i understand you so should i understand you to say that even if these officers, kenna and hogan admitted that they engaged in racial targeting on the highway and other supervisors had advised them to do so, we should give less credence to that than a set of aggregate statistics . Guest i think a set of aggregate statistics goes to the over all behavior of the new jersey state troopers. If these guys were engaged in drug interdiction unless a there been told to go after jamaican posse, and they had the dea keep very close track of who is doing the drug smuggling between on the eastern quarter. So if they are looking for particular drug gang that is racially identified, to to me it seems to me legitimate that would be one part of the ground for pulling someone over, but for average traffic stops i just not think that is happening. Host you send much of the book and you spend a lot of your recent career talking about the effectiveness of cops in new york city and denying that it involves racism in terms of how it is practiced. But you are aware that a commander, and inspector, i think Deputy Inspector is caught on audio tape. It was introduced in the play trial that you write about extensively in the book, im saying that you have to stop the right people, male, black, between the ages of 14 and 21. But he does not go on to say anything only if you have reasonable suspicion. He stops his description of the white people with male, black, ages 1421. Isnt that another admission that at least some members of an new York City Police department believe that allmale lacks are potentially criminal and that the targeting of such mail blacks is unwarranted . Guest dolores, i do nothing that is a fair characterization of what he was caught on tape saying. He had called in a Police Officer who is wired, who had recently joined the lawsuit in floyd for the fact that he had done absolutely no proactive activity in the previous year. This is one of those officers on the way low and of the bell curve of officers that are actually trying to get out of their car and investigate suspicious behavior. He put out a hypothetical, he said if we have a robbery pattern involving young, black males, black males between the ages of 14 and 22, that is who you should be stopping. He was goaded into saying that, it was clear from this interaction that this guy came in hoping to get him to Say Something that could be used in the floyd trial. This was not something he just said out of the blue on his own initiative. Even as he phrased it, i find nothing objectionable about that. He was given a hypothetical of a robbery pattern. To be honest, it is a hypothetical that sadly mears the Current Situation in new york city. That praise on minority victims in minority neighborhoods. When you you look at who is committing robberies in new york , blacks are 23 of the population, they commit 70 70 of all robberies. Whites by contrast are 30 34 of the population, they commit 4 of all robberies. So it is in those minority neighborhoods when you have elderly people getting stuck up. So when he came up with this pattern it is one that his Police Officer here, again and again, not from themselves but from the victims of robbery themselves. Police officers hope against hope that they will for once get a description of a suspect in a violent street crime, whether it is a driveby shooting or robbery, that is white. But given the fact of how crime is a distributed in cities today, that almost never happens. Host one definition of racism and the definition i call classic racism, and it takes the behavior of a few people from a particular group and then project that behavior onto everyone in the group. For for example, we know since 1972 that in urban communities you think you talk about philadelphia and the book, that the the greatest amount of serious crime is actually committed by very small number of active criminals. So the notion that, and that pattern was held over time. So theres a very small number of active criminals who are violent offenders. The nypds own statistics indicate that roughly 8090 of all stops do not produce a lesser summons and that roughly, ill take the year 2012. 80 of of blacks who were stopped during that year were not found to be engaged in criminal behavior. If you are are in innocent black person who is unfortunate to live in a high crime area, what do you make of those statistics from the Police Department . Guest first of all i have found it very easy to meet young black males who say they have never been stopped. I spoke to a boy in the mount hope section of the bronx. He said i have never been stop because im a good boy. He goes he goes to work, he goes to school, he does not hangout on the corners. In philadelphia as you mentioned, i write about young crack dealers there and she devotes an entire chapter of who she calls the clean people who are exactly the ones you mention. They drink beer rather than smoke marijuana, they stay home playing video video games, they are not hanging out in the street light. They have had no interaction with a cop. Ive also met people who say yes, i have been stopped by the cop and i understand why that was happening. The cops are doing their job. There is no question that black males today face a much higher rate of getting stopped when they are innocent than white males do today. That is a crime fact that the Community Unfortunately pays because of the elevated rates of crime. But i would take issue with your characterization of the stop data. It is true, about six about 6 of all stops resulted in an arrest and 6 of all stops resulted in a summons. The aclu, the legal a society, drew the conclusion that that meant every other stop that didnt was necessarily of an innocent person. That is just not the case. The open air drug dealing are very carefully choreographed to make sure that officers do not have probable cause to make an arrest. There is a careful segmenting of who has the money, whereas the drugs. The contraband is often kept in a neutral location. So somebody, a Police Officer can be intervening in open air drug dealing without having the probable cause to make an arrest. And of laissez theres been a pattern of car theft on the street and an officer see somebody walking along a line of cars trying doorhandles, theres no probable cause to make an arrest for that. But that may well over another car theft in that neighborhood. So we do not know what number of stops were in fact intervening in criminal behavior but i am certain it is not a 0 . Host lets go back to the facts on the innocent numbers of high crime or even low crime communities. Youre familiar with research that said that in neighborhoods where blacks and latinos only make up 14 of the residential population, they make up 70 of the stops in those locations. So it would seem that if youre in a high Crime Community or a low Crime Community, so long as you are black or latino you stand a greater risk of being stopped under the practices that were challenged in court by the lawsuit. Guest so let me ask you dealers, what do you think separation look like . In new york city as i mentioned, blacks are 23 of the pie place i commit 70 of all shootings. Of all robberies. As far shootings go, fluctuates year to year but it goes between 75 and 80 . When you add hispanic shootings to black shootings in new york city, you account for 98 of all shootings. That type of criminal behavior is going to manifest itself in other types of lawbreaking, low level lawbreaking. Whites commit less than 2 of all shootings, though they are 34 of the population. Even those crime disparities, do you think that stop rates should mirror population data . Should whites whites be 34 of all stops in blacks be 23 of all stops . Even though whites are virtually not present in violent street crime . Spee1 you you and i have talked about this before, i take that position that people are individuals and that any time we Group Individuals together and make us about the individuals in the entire group based on the behavior of a few, that is problematic. Your lawyer, im a lawyer, lawyer, theres actually a constitutional amendment that says that we shall not do that. That everyone should enjoy equal protection under the law whether they are criminal or noncriminal. So arguably, that is one of the first issues in terms of looking at aggregate data. But to criticisms that i would suggest people might be making about the book, it contains a lot of information and we only have one hour to talk about it. Guest can i make one point though, i would love love to get your answer on this, for about two years as you recall the New York Times was focusing on the 73rd precinct in brownsville, brooklyn. It had a high stop rates. What they never conveyed, lets compare brownsville to bay ridge, brooklyn which is several miles away. The stop rate differential between brownsville and bay ridge is about 15 times greater. The per capita rate of people in brownsville getting stopped have about a 15 times greater chance of getting stopped in those even in bay ridge. It is true brownsville is predominantly black and bay ridge is predominantly white and asian. What is left out of that analysis is the per capita shooting rate in brownsville is 81 times higher than in bay ridge. Now what that means is that every time, and this is again, its not coming from the police, these are people who are reporting the shootings. It means that every time there is a gang driveby shooting, the pleas are going to be out there in high numbers making stops to try and let the rival gang know that they are being observed. Given that degree of shooting differential and the inevitable response of police to it, in in order to try to prevent another person from being wounded or shot will result in a higher rate of stops. Again, if you go to the comsat meetings in new york city, these are are these weekly, data driven accountability meetings where local precinct commanders are held ruthlessly accountable for the crimes and their Solutions Forward in their precincts. They do not talk about race, they talk they talk about where people are being victimized. Given these disparities in new york city of where people are being shot, the police are going to be doing proactive policing and pedestrian stops in those neighborhoods that will generate the data that shows these disparities that the aclu will then use against the nypd in a lawsuit. , they have no choice. Host im glad hes that were choices that your position that an simplex have no choice but to accept high rates of stops and in terms of policing, high rates of lowlevel enforcement in order to have Public Safety . Guest i think that officers have an indefeasible obligation to treat everybody they made with courtesy and respect. If an innocent person is stopped and subjected to the humiliation and possibly terror of being stop by the police, the police have to explain to him why he was stopped. Ideally, play the radio call back. That officer should not walkway from that interaction without making sure that person understands why they were stopped and ideally has reached some sort of agreement as far as the broken windows to policing that you mention and these are the lowlevel, quality of life public order offensive, every time i go to the Police Community meeting in the south bronx or central harlem, central brooklyn, what i hear from the residence of those neighborhoods is that they want more policing, not less. Theyre not saying arrest the robbers, their same bring public order, they set you arrest the drug dealers and their back on the corner the next day. There are kids hanging out of my lobby smoking weed in dealing drugs, im terrified to go down and pick up my mail. I spoke with my cancer amputee. My point is please are getting the request from the members of the committee themselves. Host but the police also got that request from the community and thats how we came up with a lawsuit say talk about in the book, so those requests were from parents particularly in the bronx that said, my son connected to the store come back home without being stop by the police. There actually some media reports of people who lived in buildings being stopped in their pajamas on their way to the trash can and asked for identification. So the notion that there are at least two sets of voices, including voices the Police Officers, its often not talked about that there were former and current Police Officers who testified against the practice of stop and frisk. Why do you you think that is not often mentioned . Guest i think the officers that they got were disgruntled officers. They were inevitably people who are under observation for absolutely doing basically nothing on the job to try to protect the members of the community in which they work from violence. Given the reddick around stop, question, and frisk, i wouldve thought that aclu and the new York Civil Liberties Union would have been able to find hundreds of completely clean people that have been stopped for no reason at all. They were plaintiffs which they had whittled down and they finally got i think 11 main plaintiffs in their Class Action Lawsuit have massive criminal h. Lawsuit have massivethey recently, one of them wb he went by in the lawsuit last year was federally indicted for gang conspiracy for stomping a boy to death in the bronx several years ago. I would submit, and he was well known to people in that precinct, when they saw that he was the main plaintiff they cannot believe his eyes. There is the reason why he was stopped because hes involved in gang activity. Host but to be fair, we we had a Police Commissioner and corrections commissioner all one person, who ended up federally indicted as well and spent time in prison and he came out of prison been able to talk more concretely about the hollows of incarceration and the last three chapters of your book talk more about incarceration and that sort of thing than it does about the war on cops. Why do you include those last few chapters, they seem to have very little to do with the war on the topic that the book is titled. My point is the black lives Matter Movement has a much broader focus and we are living through a moment where there is hardly a single lawenforcement practice that is not under attack for having a disparate impact on plaques. Certainly we live in a narrative now of mass incarceration. That is part of this largescale attack on the legitimacy of the criminal Justice System. The same charges are brought to bear against incarceration practices as they are brought to bear against discretionary proactive policing. The the same disparate impact argument that the overrepresentation of blacks in prison is due to racism, unspecified somewhere along the line whether it is Police Officers, juries, prosecutors or judges. To see them as quite part of the same narrative. But i am trying to pushed back again. Host what you say to your critics would say, as a middleclass, white woman white woman who has a very strong education background, you went to stanford, you went to cambridge, you majored in english and you have a law degree. Why would it be appropriate for you to, im going to read from the back jacket of the book itself. Says mcdonnell gives voice to the many residents of high crime neighborhoods who want proactive policing. She warns that racebased attacks in the criminal Justice System from the white house on down are eroding the authority of law and putting lives at risk. So this statistics suggest that you would be the one least victimized by crime, that you would be the one least likely to have nonconsensual contact with the Police Officer. So free critics, why would would it be appropriate for you to take on this role and what we already discussed it talks about one side of the issue to people who want proactive policing and it doesnt talk enough about those who say i have been victim of proactive policing. How do you respond to that . Guest personally i dont think race has anything to do with it. I think thats a very dangerous path to start down that. Host you say racism have anything to do with it, with what is it . Spee2 it is is my right to try to describe what i see happening in high crime areas as a result of this largescale deed legitimization of lawenforcement. I dont feel like i am less represented by president barack obama because he is black or that my congressman may be black so he may speak to me i think every individual is trying as they say to address the facts as they see them. I dont think skin color credential rises or d credential rising me to write about policing. I wonder i wonder if you would not raise the same can complaints against Jeffrey Fagan or white criminologist who also looks at this and takes the exact opposite position. You dont have to be of any particular race to attend these meetings where you hear people begging for police protection. Bernard another host im going to interrupt again. I want to go back to the other part of that question which is, you spend a spend a great deal of the book critiquing social Science Research. But there is not really anything in your educational background that suggest that you have had training in social Science Research. So clearly one of the critiques would be, how can a non social scientist critique social Science Research . Guest i would hope that social Science Research is transparent enough that it doesnt require a phd in statistics, but i think i more often invoke social Science Research to buttress my arguments. The claim for example that the criminal Justice System and incarceration rate demonstrate systemic bias in the criminal justice criminal out just to to show that for decades and people like Albert Blumstein have been forced to conclude that if anything if anything was once ive had is that blacks are promised less for homicide then the rights of Homicide Commission would protect. Even michael was forced to conclude that it was blacks rate of criminal offending that explains their high representation in prison. Im happy to look at social Science Research but so far it has not been able to validate the mass incarceration. Host and it has not been able to validate the efficacy of the brooklyns policing either. Im sure youre familiar with david harris. He is a law professor out of pittsburgh. He read her book called failed evidence. He has police, why dont they use more on social Science Research. What the response was because if you look at any set of statistics you can see anything that contradicts the other. I dont want us to run out of time before we get to the topic of right crime, which is almost totally ignored. The subheading in your war on cop, how the the new attack online order makes everyone less safe. I challenge you the word new, youre familiar with the commission from the 1920s and 30s. And its a 14 volume report, they had a chapter or a volume on lawlessness in law enforcement. The commission was looking at lawenforcement behavior in relation to prohibition. During the prohibition era, the driveby shooters were white. There were were white and mostly middle age fighting over what kind of territory, the right to do what . To bootleg. So we know that this notion of driveby is not as he pointed out before, a single race phenomenon. We saw the valentines day massacre, and all kinds of really interesting shooting in Public Places when the offenders were white. Gina how they resolve that issue when the driveby shooters were white . Guest beyond, youve moved into prohibition, i dont know. Host they legalize the kind of behavior that was producing this kind of violence. In four, mostly white states in the United States, the possession of marijuana for Recreational Purposes has been legalized. We in new york city disproportionately arrest young black males for possession of marijuana, while statistics suggest that marijuana use in the city probably is predominantly white, male, and better educated. Given those differences, why is it that you spend so much time in the book focusing on the black crime and essentially denying that there is any racism . Guest well im interested in violent street crime. I care about black lives and you have now blacks dying nationally at six times the rate of whites and hispanics combined. Thats a problem. The reason that is the cases that blacks commit homicide at eight times the rate of whites and hispanics combined. James alan fox looked at young, male use of gun homicide and found that black males between the ages of 14 and 17 commit gun homicide at ten times the rate of whites and hispanics combined. If you want to save lives, the lives that are being lost are greatly disproportionate rates are black in this country. We have talked about the athlete numbers before, over 6000 blacks are killed every year. Host where did you get that figure, whats the the source of that . Guest thats from the fbi. Host im glad you brought that up. Guest theres more than just white and hispanic deaths combined. Blacks blacks are 13 of the population, so if you want to say that black lives, homicide and driveby shootings is where to look. There may have been different patterns of crime in the past, but what we have now, the police are dealing with whats right before them in the street. Host so regarding the article that included the word search which you use a lot in your book, we have already talked about really low crime numbers, they increase by one if its a baseline of one, its a 50 increase. So so when you talk about these really large percentages, sometimes youre only talking about really small numbers. For example, in the book they use the word search, but they do not talk about the fact that in 22 states the homicide, gun rate for black men actually went down. At 248 increase in idaho for young men, not black men, engaged in gun homicide. Certainly would represent a surge. There is a question of, why is it that we spend so much time and you and i talked about this, if, if we spent more time talking about crime in general from the perspective that involves variables that can be changed, nobody can change the race but we can change the other contributors to nonviolent crime. We might be able to and i want to talk specifically, get we we are talking about white crime because it is something we do not spend enough time talking about. You specifically talk about black crime, but if we look at the names like dylan ruth, james holmes and adam lanza and eric harris and dylan, youre talking about 54 dead people, 92 injured people, including 20 children ages six and seven in just four incidents. Do we want to be concerned and certainly theres a lot of immediate Media Attention to these deaths. How can the kinds of policing tactics described in the book help to prevent those kind of incidents . Guest they are completely different incidents i think. Frankly, if i were black i would be offended by the white hysteria over newton shootings. Because, the number of white kids that were killed, you get that tally and maybe half a year easily a blacks through driveby shootings that the media, despite their absolute commitment to the black lives matter narrative, they basically ignore. In. In cleveland in september of 2015, there are three children under the age of five who were killed and driveby shootings. We dont know their names, there was not a massive uproar about that. The police chief of cleveland who happens to be black was in tears. He says why is everybody protesting the cop when they dont protest when we kill each other . There is a girl, 9yearold girl in ferguson, missouri who is killed on her bed is studying in august of 2015. Host i have often heard that same and that you just may, that people people do not protest about the lives or deaths of black people. There are at least 20 organizations and i think at least ten in new york city that actually do. They are community, grassroots organizations of mothers against murder, various other organizations that do in fact protest the deaths of black or white people at the hands of similar race because statistics indicate that if youre going to get killed, more likely are going to be killed by someone who knows you, who may be intimate with you in the same is true of me. So one of the things you talk about hard facts, one of of the things we do not want to do, you use the word method in your book several times, you dont want to perpetuate those myths. Theres nothing theres nothing that communities are doing to protest the individual loss of life at the hands of other individuals were not police. Theyre pushing against violence. Guest that is not what black lives activist protest identities killings. But but youre absolutely right. There are local groups. And maybe its the medias fault for not paying attention because i know youre right. There is a girl beat to death by another girl earlier this year in brooking, coney island, and there was a local protest saying, why why do we keep doing this. Youre absolutely right. Host i want to look at statistics and unfortunately the criminals justice statistics defunded when the federal authority went through their budgetary issues. But the last set of data they had on homicide between 2011 and that was desegregated by race. So for those who were both over and under age 18, 4000 people who were white were arrested for homicide. 4149 people were black were arrested for homicide. So you would agree that those numbers are very close as opposed to very far apart. The statistic would suggest that the overwhelming percentage of victims of white homicide arrestees were also white and that the overwhelming number of as you have already pointed out, victims of black homicides were black. Why is it that we do not see a discussion of white crime in your book . Wed all be concerned about the white victims by the perpetrator would we not . Guest i be happy to d racialized this discussion. Im not one who one who started this. This is a product of decades of race taste attacks on Police Officers claiming that they are on some sort of racist vendetta against blacks and that the end result that we see with lack disproportionate in prisons is due to criminal justice racism. That is a very dangerous lie that increases the hostility that officers are getting in the street. It is not me was made this a racial discussion. It is decades of activists, their media enablers, but lets look at those absolute numbers. The issue again is what is the per capita rate. Host every time we Start Talking about race and per capita and percentages we de individualize behavior. So 11 of the things your book talks about is the personal responsibility and parental responsibility and i went to segue a little bit here to make a point. Your book i read from cover to cover, the other book i read most closely cover to cover to your book was between the world emmy. In the book he talked about that death the prince jones. Im assuming youre familiar with the case. So prince joness mother is a medical doctor, his father dr. , his father is a corporate executive, they were married, there is a long segment of the book that talks about the solution of the father. But we dont talk about fathers without jobs, theyre not a surly vest fathers, brothers who, brothers who may have other kinds of Mental Health or debt drug addiction problems may not be the best fathers. The marriage is bad, it may not be the best thing for children to keep it together because that we have all kinds of data to suggest that when children view violence in the home that it increases the likelihood that they themselves will be violent. So there is this notion that the panacea of a father may not be the case. But doctor jones and her husband were middleclass, hardworking people. Their son went to Religious School and was pursuing his degree at harvard university. He nonetheless and out dead at the hands of a Police Officer who happened to be black. Because that is one of the issues, is it it just a problem when white Police Officers and black victims, no, it is a police issue arguably. We do not want any color plea shooting innocent and unarmed people who you make a lot, include a lot of stories about people who are aggressive. But we know theres all kinds of footage of Police Officers attacking males and females of color were not aggressive. Im sure sure youve seen the footage of the officer beating the 51yearold homeless woman on the side of the road. You may have seen the footage of the houston Police Department situation with an alleged burglar, 15 years old, old, he was hit by the police car and then set upon by Police Officer including kicking him in the gray. So im assuming and you talk about on page 45 that Police Misconduct should be dealt with rigorously. You dont necessarily get to the definition of Police Misconduct. When people see this behavior, should it matter what race they are . To say this is something that needs to be addressed and done away with, if we can. Spee2 i take take it you are saying that we should take interest and im agreeing with you. Because that is what the discourse that im rebutting. If were were going to talk about absolute numbers and you think that race is not important and that absolute numbers is what we should be looking at, i talk about the category in the Washington Post database of unarmed victims of the police. In 2015, there were 36 black males, socalled on armed victims of plea shooting. Thirtyone socalled, on armed white male victims of Police Shootings. So lets stop at this point then doing any kind of race shows. Those are very close numbers. That would suggest that if youre just going to look at the absolute numbers that we do not have a problem. And lets look at the individual cases which is what i did. I dug into the facts behind that database and what i found was that those 36 black males, two of them were accidental shooting, the race cannot possibly have played a role even though i dont think race played a role to begin with and any of. But to cut those out, several of those people were trying to grab the officers gun, or otherwise beating him with his equipment so violently is to put that officer in legitimate danger. There is a white guy who was coming at an officer, my point is you dont think that white guys are also shot . Host in fact, your book talks about the decision that the governor made to sign an executive order to put special prosecutor in charge of plea shooting cases are violence cases. We know people are being choked and other kinds of things. The 2014 legislation out of wisconsin that the Lieutenant Colonel who is the father of the white victim fought for ten years to put in place. Comes out of an incident that involves a white officer shooting a white victim. So part of, i think where we can reach consensus is that we dont want any victim being shot by police under circumstances. The kindest way to put it would be under questionable circumstances. One of the things i want to talk about before we run out of time, one of the questions and i went about it in a longwinded way, is is what does your book have to offer to doctor jones and her husband for having lost their black son to Police Violence . Under circumstances that do not result in a prosecution for the officer. Now she sits in her home in philadelphia wondering how this could happen to her son which the book talks about dirty people and clean people, she was as clean as she could be. Person was clean. Guest so are we back to racializing the top again. Youre saying that there some kind of police vendetta against the black people. Host no. Guest then why does her race matter. I would offer my heartfelt host i was talking about her clean is not her race when i questioned you. Guest well, okay. Host race and how dirty and clean go together . Guest absolute not. Host so so much of the book is dedicated to denying that race is playing a role in the criminal Justice System and in policing. But you know the history of the United States. The the United States was built on formal racialized laws that for two and half centuries held African People in captivity and the for another hundred years after that allowed state, local, federal government to tax laws that allowed for racial discrimination. Im originally from us also i live through legalized racial discrimination. What you think would be the legacy of three for six years of overtly supported by legal statute. Guest theres an understandable legacy of mistrust. The role of the police in this nation deplorable history of racism, segregation, the most grotesque violation of our founding ideals was very strong, there is no question. The police supported not just slavery but they supported jim crow. They have engaged in brutal behavior in the south and the memory of that understandably takes a long time to pay. It makes any Police Shooting of a black male understandably and particularly front. That is absolutely true. But policing today is data driven. The revolution that began in new york city where the police would pour over crime data on a daily basis and then hourly basis is colorblind. It looks only at where people are being victimized and that is where cops are going. It doesnt say, and for years the wrap against the cop as you know was was ignored crime in minority neighborhoods. That was, they said that was just how people behave. They they put their resources in white neighborhoods. Police data, hotspot policing does not allow that to happen. The other thing that drives a Police Deployment is again, those heartfelt commands from people in innercity scene, i cannot go out into my lobby because theres kids trespassing there. That is different. And those people do not have your men. They depend on the police. Host i understand its a very emotional conflict. But when we talk about data for as long as we collect crime statistics, roughly 7070 of arrestees every year are white or they fall in the category that we call white and 30 fall into the category we call black. When we look across racial categories within offenses, there has to be something that the white and black and a few other categories, offenders or arrestees have in common, even though they do not have racing common. Would it be more fruitful in crime detection which we know they did a horrible job of, but it doesnt detect very much crime. Wouldnt it be more fruitful in detection, the thing that we can measure, because we have never been able to measure deterrence as long as its been a criminology if we stop looking at different racial categories and start looking across the offending which unfortunately in your book argues racism in the criminal Justice System but it expends a lot of time say it is okay to think of black people as dangerous or potentially dangerous. Guest that is an absolutely unjustified statement. Please, buy me one place in that book where a state that. I say repeatedly that there are, the majority of the people in these communities are lawabiding, they need support, they are trying to do the right thing by their children, it has nothing to do with impugning black people of somehow all criminal. But but if you cannot live by the statistics then you as a criminologist, i think think it are not serving your profession very well. The statistics are what they are. New york city, again 98 of shootings, this is not to host isnt that then projecting onto all blacks. Guest no, its not. Why is it not possible to say that there is a vastly disproportionate rates of criminal offending without saying that all blacks are criminals that is a complete guest let me ask this question, there is more to the identity of the race. Guest and what predicts this is single home. You can talk to social scientist they find inevitably in president obama talked about it in his 2008 fathers day speech, fathers day speech, excuse me let me finish for once. In his 2008 fathers day fathers day speech he did single out black fathers for not doing the right thing and being responsible towards their children. Yes he did. He said if we are honest will will admit that there are two money black fathers that are not supporting their children. This is not exclusively, you can look at the prison population and those men and then in there, overwhelmingly from singleparent homes. The research that has been done on the consequences of being raised by single mothers is not look at race, it looks at the fact that children of all races grow up without a father and above all in a community where males are not expected as a precondition to anything further to be responsible for their fathers. Those children have magnitude higher, about five times higher chance of becoming juvenile delinquents and ending up in prison as an adult. So i would love to make that an issue and lets stop talking about race and Start Talking about fathers because all kids need their fathers. Host right, and the data shows that even whites who do not have fathers and their many of them as well, have issues. But also, doctor jones and the other single mentors who who successfully raise their children to be lawabiding go on to contribute to society, probably would take offense. Guest well then they dont know statistics. There are not many heroic single mothers who are doing the right thing. You would basically not do any statistics to serve your purpose. When you look at the fact that as obama said, kids growing growing up in singleparent families are fivenine times more likely to face very negative social outcomes. Does that negate the fact that of course there are plenty of single mothers were beating the odds. As a social scientist, i think you would live or die by data. That is going to show us trends in the problems we need to work on. Host it does, but because i was a sociologist before i was was a social scientist, one of the things we say is. Guest well then lets say that about Police Officers too. Were not going to look at the officers race, were not going to look at the victims race, were going to look at individuals. Host that is one place that we can reach consensus because when we have Police Tactics that blanket communities with various strategies, what we know at least since 1972 that there is a very small number of very active, serious offenders who can be identified and who can be dealt with, arguably without interfering with the liberty of. Guest and please tactics art targeted hotspots. Thats thats what the nypd did come they pinpoint [inaudible conversation] guest but people in those spots are not engaged in criminology. We are actually out of time. Host would you agree that the police are required to do their job in a humane way . Spee2 absolutely, not just to me they should be polite as a basic manner of common courtesy. Common courtesy. Too often they develop rough demeanors, their unapproachable and you can i can answer out of them. That is what training should be focused on. How to maintain a courteous attitude towards the public. This pianist, the cops face a very difficult situations, above all im going to be honest, and innercity neighborhoods where theres a legacy of airmail and people throwing trash at them, pampers and whatnot off roofs. That is tough to do, but to maintain an open mind but im not talk to an officer who said i am working for the good people in the community and they believe in those people. Host before we run out of time i want to ask the question, is it it possible the behavior of some individual cops are what is making the police job more dangerous . For example, if we look at two cases that are older not in the book, we have five officers involved in the bell incident, one fires 31 times. If we look at the air guard or situation there are seven officers standing round, one is talking calmly to him before the officer jumps on his back and starts to choke him which is contrary to the patrol guy. Theres nothing the patrol guy says you can choke a person if they resist. Guest officers need constant training in the use of force. The eric garner eric garner arrest is heartbreaking to watch. That was understandably, theres something almost tragic about his protest. Host because were about to run out of time a chicago youth asked if he hated the police and he said i absolutely do not hate the police. He said i need the police, he said but, i dont know if i called the police for help which officer is going to show up. The one who is going to help me, or the one that is going to hurt me. What would you be your takeaway message for that young man . How can we ensure that if he calls for help that he wants, we can get the officer that is going to help him instead of the one thats when to hurt him. Spee2 we need to make sure that the commanders are paying close attention to officer behavior. The rate of Police Shootings in chicago is very low compared to the rate of death is by criminal homicide are. Those bad apples have to be removed but they are by no means representative of the entire police force. Unfortunately police have lethal weapons with them. When they. When they make mistakes, mike people and other professions like journalist or politicians, the consequences are dire. Theyre trying to do the right thing and save as many lives as possible. That includes minority lives. Host i want to thank you so much for the time that you have taken, think we can both agree that this is an issue that has been contentious in the past. We will continue to be contentious in the future and that one day we can talk about common humanity, the good just way you ended up talking about the good that the police do, that we can spend more time focusing on the majority of all people in the United States for actually lawabiding citizens, right. I think thats one thing we can agree on. Thank you so much. Think you so much. Cspan, created by americas Cable Television companies and brought to you as a Public Service service by your cable or satellite provider. Book tv recently visited capitol hill test members of congress what they are reading the summer. But it is long