Lee said people talk about public safety, but "where we stop short every single time is talking about, how do we invest in communities that have been underinvested," and mentioned education and jobs as the kind of investments needed.
We have data. We know what makes communities safe. But, every single time, we defer, we kind of go back right to, well, 'policing in and of itself is public safety.' Public safety doesn't begin or end with policing.
She said the conversation needs to move a lot more quickly than it is right now, and that
We need to start "looking deeply into our culture, looking deeply within ourselves and figuring out why we make policy decisions that we know have adverse impact on these communities, that we know are setting communities up for failure."
Jennings had many more questions than answers after seeing the videos. He said, "we have an epidemic of hard hearts in this country." Among his questions?
how these officers were hired. And what were the standards? Where do they come from? What was the testing? And what kind of people are we putting with such power in our communities that they feel like they could drag you out of a car and beat you to death? I mean, these -- this is not protecting and serving. This is not law and order.
Sellers said even if police reform legislation had passed and everything had been implemented, it wouldn't be enough.
(W)e still... have to have a conversation about culture because what we saw and the conversation that we have to have is about the nuance around systems in this country. And systemic racism is a word that people don't want to hear... we're so anti-intellectual that they clench up when they hear it, but it's a conversation that we have to have.
Police have been given more training, resources, and equipment- which didn't prevent this from happening. He said we need to have a real conversation,
whether it's a 'hard heart' conversation, or a 'cultural conversation', or a... 'black folk don't get the benefit of their humanity' conversation, this is where we have to have this difficult conversation.
Sellers draws a "direct line" from this incident to things like the lack of safe drinking water in black communities, poor and unsafe schools, and healthcare disparities for blacks, saying, "That is systemic racism across institutions."
Kinzinger acknowledges that we need to have "real conversations" but hates the term. You start the discussion on how to fix things, he said,
And then what happens is the online kind of profit machine kicks up. And, on the right, it's all the sudden, like, we have to back the blue and not talk about any reforms. And sometimes, on the left, it ends up being basically -- you saw it to the extreme, defund the police. And then you end up hating each other, not talking about it, not solving problems. This is a moment where I think, if we can actually be like, OK, look, neither side is going to get exactly what they want in policing or in reform, but we can make a huge difference, sort of like the Justice for George Floyd Act, we can make a difference. But everybody's got to get away from just default(ing) to their corners.
In the This Week classroom, Martha Raddatz talked with Apex, NC Police Chief Jason Armstrong, who was also chief in Ferguson, MO, after the Michael Brown shooting.
He said the publicity of cases like this, and what happens to the officers involved, help act as "the number one deterrent" because officers "see what's going to happen to them when they participate in behavior such as this." They're seeing it's not going to be tolerated, by law enforcement or by their communities.
He also said that, no matter how good their training is, police officers are human beings.
And when faced with, you know, whatever circumstances they're being faced with, they're going to make decisions that automatically come to mind to them or what are natural to kick in for them. Unfortunately, violence is what was natural for these individuals in this instance.
Law enforcement leaders need to do "a better job identifying these individuals that are inside our organizations and our police departments and getting them out of the profession." And all of us need to learn about implicit bias- and recognize it in ourselves. When people identify their biases, they can "learn better to work within them" so they don't negatively impact others.
And we have to take that emotion that we're all dealing with right now, and we have to turn that into fuel and fuel that will lead us to see some change in this country.
We have lots of work to do, together.
See you around campus.
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