More television for serious readers. I am an associate professor of sociology and Public Service at New York University, and i am thrilled to be in conversation around this great book. I am going to quickly introduce our author and commentator, and we will dive into conversation. Neil gross, author of this book, is a sociologist best known for his research on higher education, politics, and academic life. He is a professor of sociology. In addition to this book he is the author of two other books, wire professors liberal, and why do conservatives care . And the making of the american philosopher. He is the coeditor for four other books. Patrick is the william s. Professor of sociology and Public Affairs at the Princeton School of public and international affairs. His research focuses on urban inequality, violence, and public policy. He was formerly chair of sociology here at New York University and serves as scientific director at the crime lab in new york. He too is the author of multiple books. Please join me in welcoming neil, and i look forward to your comments. [applause] i went to start by saying thank you to eric and the whole staff year at the institute for Public Knowledge for organizing this event. I am grateful to eric for his support over the years and to everyone here, and to pat and to jacob and to liv blazer who could not be here today and sent few questions along in her absence. Walk the walk is my first nonacademic book. It is narrative nonfiction. I thought it might be appropriate to read a small selection from it rather than do the standard academic introduction, and my hope is during the cuban date we can dive more deeply. Q and a we can dive more deeply into the substance of the chapters. On a mild, late spring night in 1993, a Police Officer in berkeley, california sought a black and yellow two door chevy for a traffic violation. The officer was 21 years old, white. He was working a midnight shift in the lower Income Neighborhood adjacent to North Oakland that had seen more than share of violence, much of it linked to the trading crack cocaine. The year before 12 meet 12 people were murdered in berkeley. Nearly 900 were robbed, and more than 700 were victims of aggravated assault, putting the Violent Crime rate at twice the national average. At 1 30 a. M. , the officer was driving north on the next commercial and residential street. A block ahead, the chevy was stopped at a red light in the left turn lane. Not waiting for the light to turn green, the driver of the car lurched forward, veering out of the lane. This was hardly a serious offense. The streets were empty and there was no oncoming traffic. Still, it was illegal. The officer hit his overhead lights. A car stopped, one of a dozen he mightve made that night. Except the car accelerated. The officer could not tell what he was trying to get away. At the next three the chevy went left. The officer followed. Stanton, a small street that branched off, and as the officer like most small to midsize Police Agencies, the Berkeley Police department did not have its own Police Academy. With the officer joined as a recruit, he was sent to the academy run by the city of sacramento built on the grounds with the california Highway Patrol trained. There, and future men and women of Law Enforcement of their morning runs. The recruits all idealistic in their own way, driven to scratch some interest by putting on a badge. Trainers taught them that car stops can be dangerous, even for minor infractions. Usually drivers and passengers are cooperative, but you never know. You might pull over someone with a felony warrant or a dealer with a stash and a gun hidden under the front seat or a guy with anger issues looking for a fight. Posters hung in the gymnasium where the recruits practice defensive tactics. One showed the chp survival created. Quote, the will to live, to survive the attack, was to be uppermost in every officers mind. Fight back against all odds. I do not let them kill you on some dirty freeway. Recruits were trained to be on high alert when stopping cars. At the cardinal rules with that you had to keep everyone contained, and hence had to be visible at all times. Ing on Stanton Street as the officer pulled up a young man about his age, black with cornrows stepped from the passenger of the car. He was shirtless with pale blue shorts and blue nike. The driver had stayed the wheel. The officer got out of his vehicle and yelled to the passenger, get back in the car and close the door. The man said flatly. Why im stopping this car. Get back in and close the door. The man ignored him. He began walking toward the porch of his house, only a paces away. The officer trying to keep his eye on the driver, ran to the passenger and put his hand his shoulder. The man flung it off. If you touch me again, im going to kick your , he said. The two were face to face. The man had threatened the cop. He was going to jail. Get on the ground. Youre under arrest. The officer ordered. He wanted the man seated or prostrate. So would be harder for him to make good on his threat. The officer. A recent of uc berkeley, had followed every of the rodney king case. But he wasnt thinking about the symbolism. A white Police Officer ordering, a black man to the ground. He was thinking, if this guys willing to fight rather sit in a car while i write his buddy ticket, there must be something he doesnt want me to know. Or find his other thought was, dont let them kill you on some dirty freeway. He called for cover. The driver also black and in his twenties, was out of the car. Now to the passenger again made, a move toward the porch. This time, the officer grabbed him, pushed him against the hood of the chevy, intending to apply handcuffs. The man pulled loose and swung at the officer, clocking him on his cheek. The officer stumbled a couple of steps and drews baton. Few police had access tasers back then. The lapd officers assaulted rodney king were the exception, so batons were the best non lethal option. Now the officer upped his radio request to code three cover for an emergency. Sirens kicked on in the distance, along with the intermittent beeping police frequencies that signals trouble. Get on the ground. Youre under. The officer kept repeating, thwacking the passenger in his leg while the man stood ready to box. He grabbed the baton, but officer wrested it back and hit him again in the leg. Then once in the abdomen a job hed been taught in defensive tactics. His partner from next beat over came running to cuff the driver as the two of them fought. Her baton tumbled from her hands. The driver went to snatch it off the ground and she tackled him. Meanwhile, an older couple had emerged from the house. The passengers parents it would later turn out and, were trying to restrain their son. The officer saw why he was holding a sizable rock his head and was about to throw it. A third cop arrived and rushed to help the driver. The first officer unwholesome hit a handgun, a stainless steel 40 caliber smith and wesson and pointed it at the rock wielding passenger, lining them up in his sights so that hed have a clean shot. Put the rock down, he screamed. After a tense moment, the man did as he was ordered. The officer wasnt with the choice of shooting him front of his parents or taking a rock the head. That berkeley officer was me. We never figured out why the passenger fought. He had an arrest record but wasnt on probation or parole. He had no warrants and contraband on him. Hed been but wasnt drunk. Taken into custody. All he would say was ill be out. Gross. Ill find you you. The stop that night on staton should never have escalated as it did. The outcome could have been horrific. The passenger wasnt blameless. He should have gotten back in the car when i asked. He shouldnt have threatened me or punched me in the face. Or tried to throw a rock. But i wasnt blameless either. Nor was the Police Institution that molded me into the cop. I was as a rookie. Checked all the right boxes. I was born and raised in the berkeley area. Would be policing my hometown. I was educated. I was young, but not completely inexperienced. Id worked part time for several Police Agencies while in college, including as a dispatcher. I had a clean record. Id gone into policing with the best of intentions to help people and make the community safer. And yet there i was, gun in hand, fighting a young black man over what . Over . Nothing really. What went wrong . I served as a berkeley officer for 11 months before quitting and going to graduate school to get a ph. D. In sociology. Looking for answers to questions just like that. Ive been a social scientist for more than two decades now, and ive thought often the staten street fight with a mixture of guilt, sadness and dismay. At Colby College in maine. I teach courses about the police. I sometimes assess proposals for Police Reform by asking whether they would have prevented the kind of escalation that occurred. Could the whole incident have been avoided . My training had been different. If the department had different policies in place. If the Police Academy hadnt taught me to be paranoid about car stops, perhaps i wouldnt have perceived a passenger walking away as such a threat if california had mandated meaningful deescalation training for officers, maybe i would have thought to use calmer tone or to Say Something less hostile than get on the ground. Maybe i would have retreated after the man threatened me and waited for the arrival. More officers so we could have arrested safely. Through sheer strength of numbers, if Department Policy had that lethal force could only be used when there was absolutely no alternative, maybe i would have ducked for cover when it looked like rocks were about to fly. Instead of drawing my weapon. Maybe, but probably not. You can train and rewrite policy all day long, but done in isolation. That wont get you very far. If youve got a department full of cops who think of themselves as aggressive crime fighters locked in a life or death struggle against the forces of evil, which is how many officers thought of themselves. Even in liberal educated then alienation resentment are bound to spread in heavily policed neighborhoods and in the heat of the moment. You wont see police down. Policy change is crucially important. But to fix policing, we need change. Cop culture. The values the beliefs and assumptions. The worldview of those in Law Enforcement. Right now, not enough people are talking about how to do that. In the wake of the murder, george floyd by former minneapolis Police OfficerDerek Chauvin in the massive black lives matter protests that followed a box data for progress poll found large majorities of likely voters supported such Police Reform ideas as mandatory body cameras, collecting better data on use of force and banning chokeholds. Likewise, a cnn poll found a mere 14 of American Adults believe that policing works pretty well as is, and 53 favored major changes to the institution, with remaining 32 preferring smaller scale reforms. Politicians at the federal state and local levels primarily the democratic side of the aisle, tried to address this demand for change. Federal legislation ultimately stalled. The senate sought to forbid chokeholds and no knock warrants reduce Liability Protections for police, require implicit bias training and much more. States, for their part, upped deescalation, instructing officers to intervene. They saw their peers engage in misconduct and changed laws governing the use of force cities, increased oversight of police operations, pulled cops out of schools, even prohibited Police Officers from doing low level traffic enforcement. But whether wellconceived or not, each of these plans for reform will quickly run up a limit. The aggressive culture of policing that characterizes american departments that culture prioritizes above all, tactical safety, putting bad guys behind bars. Loyalty to other cops. And not taking flak from anyone on the street. Policy changes perceived to be at odds with those values, basically, anything that constrains the options cops have in dealing with what they see as dangerous and situations will be resisted and undermined at every turn. Weve been here before. After the 2014 death of Michael Brown in ferguson and the subsequent protests and unrest president obama assembled a task force charged with developing a for policing in the 21st century. The task force issued policy recommendations, but its central insight was that policy change isnt enough. Alone to ensure good policing. Theres an old saying the task noted Organizational Culture eats policy for lunch. Any Law Enforcement organization can make great rules and policies, the report continued. But if policies conflict with existing culture, they will not be institutionalized and behavior will not change change. Despite the reports emphasis for reform, typically aim at regular or limiting the power of police not changing police culture. Politicians and pundits talk occasionally about the need for Law Enforcement officers view themselves as guardians rather warriors. But its difficult to know that distinction entails. Let alone how agencies could move in such a direction. Its as though policymakers cant imagine. What ethical, effective democratic policing might look like. But the culture of policing can be transformed. Three unusual departments dedicated to replacing the aggressive fighter with Something Different and better have worked to come up with healthier, more socially responsible models of what it means. Be a good cop. Many Police Forces promise change. These three are walking the walk and they have invaluable lessons to teach all of us about the importance of leadership, creativity, perseverance and Community Support when it comes changing how Police Officers approach their job. I profiled these three cities in my book stockton, california with 320,000 residents. It is the central valley. Chief jones who graduated from the police one year after i did. Hasnt turned stockton pd into a policing nirvana. Stockton is a rough and tumble city plagued by Gang Violence and of the officers in the 400 plus Person Department there are old school as hard charging as they come, but an increasing number are new school. Joness achievement. Over the course of ten years. In introducing a palpably better approach warrants exploration in colorado, a high plains town of 100,000 northeast of boulder, chief mike butler spent decades building one of the most Progressive Police in the nation. One already doing many of the things reform activists are calling for. The results are impressive. Crime rates have fallen without resort, heavy handed tactics and the police are seen by locals as contributing to the social good. Finally, lagrange, Georgia Population 31,000, a pencil on the map not far from the alabama line. Improbably, perhaps, Lagrange Police chief lew mar, a republican and reluctant supporter of president trump, has refashioned a once manifestly racist Police Department into one focused on racial reconciliation. Equality before the law and the of life. How this was accomplished is instructive for. Any community looking to move forward from. A blighted policing past. The challenges this country faces in getting the professional, equitable and humane policing it needs are formidable. The aggressive culture of policing encountered 25 years ago prevails in too many departments and racial inequities are entrenched amid National Outrage about police abuse. The temptation has arisen to either write off policing or impose a pose. A plethora of legal and policy restraints to bring into line. But we write off the police not in the foreseeable future. And while restraints on police are needed, public institutions, the police need more than rules to effectively. They also require an animating spirit, a culture one that offers employees a sense of Mission Purpose and identity and, that steers them toward doing the right thing. Changing cop culture become a new national priority. Thank you. Ill move over and well start the conversation. Thanks. All right. Thank you for for that excerpt. So what were going to do now is pat is going to share some comments and then nia will respond and well kind of break into a conversation and including some some q a from from you all. Yeah. Thanks, jacob. And by the way, jacob failed to mention my true claim to fame, which is that my first dissertation that i ever chaired, dr. Jacob faber summit last year. That is what im most proud of in my career. So this is this is a beautiful book. It really is. You all reading this . The neil, you did fantastic job putting this together. Its a major accomplishment. You know, neil describes it as narrative nonfiction, which is accurate. But he also weaves in social science in to every chapter in a way thats seamless in a way that is powerful, in a way doesnt miss the the base behind, the arguments. So it really is a major accomplishment to do that and to kind of tell these stories in such a riveting way. Its its not a common trai