Latest / NO FILTER / DOJ ends police reform deals_ halts department probes(M4A_128K)

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DOJ ends police reform deals_ halts department probes(M4A_128K) · NO FILTER

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: There are certain phrases that stay with everyone. From the
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: summer of twenty twenty, I can't breathe racial reckoning, Black
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: lives matter. And then there's what six year old Gianna
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Floyd said about her father, My daddy changed the world well.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: President Biden referenced that moment while signing an executive order
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  Speaker 1: on police reform two years after her father's murder.
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  Speaker 2: Now and she is two years ago shirt Movia Science,
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  Speaker 2: she said, my daddy has.
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: Changed the world well.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Now, five years after George Floyd's death, a lot that
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  Speaker 1: did change is being chipped away, sometimes literally. Black Lives
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Matter Plaza in DC is no more and site was
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: paved over earlier this year, companies are stepping away from
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: their diversity, equity inclusion promises, and just days before tomorrow,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Row's anniversary of George Floyd's murder, some of the heralded
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: change to police accountability came undone to President Trump. He
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: was president in twenty twenty, and his Department of Justice
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  Speaker 1: announced a move this week to dismiss police oversight agreements,
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  Speaker 1: both in Louisville, where Brionna Taylor was killed in March
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  Speaker 1: of twenty twenty, and in Minneapolis. Where George Floyd was
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  Speaker 1: killed on May twenty fifth, twenty twenty at. These agreements
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  Speaker 1: are called consent decrees. The DJ argues in the Wall
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Street Journal, nobody is above the law, not even the police.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Yet the overwhelming majority of police officers should be free
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  Speaker 1: to continue what they do best, protect and serve their communities.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: The Civil Rights Division will work with, not against, our
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: brave police. Now, the rhetoric and the actions, all taken together,
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  Speaker 1: raise an uncomfortable question. The murder of George Floyd did
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  Speaker 1: change the world, but five years later is the world
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: changing back. The mayor of Minneapolis was asked about the
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: end of federal oversight of police reform in his city,
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  Speaker 1: and he says, we're doing it anyway. Our next guest
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  Speaker 1: has been helping police in Minneapolis and across the country
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  Speaker 1: navigate these agreements. Michael Harrison served as chief of the
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  Speaker 1: police departments in Baltimore and New Orleans. He's now lead
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  Speaker 1: investigator at the organization Effective Law Enforcement for All. Mister Harrison,
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  Speaker 1: thank you for being with me so In this announcement
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  Speaker 1: from the Assistant Attorney General harmcdillon, ending consent decrees in
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  Speaker 1: these investigations, she said that unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats often
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  Speaker 1: have anti police agendas. Let's start here, Former Chief, you
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  Speaker 1: have an anti police agenda.
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  Speaker 4: Absolutely not. First of all, thank you so much for
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  Speaker 4: having me. Absolutely not. I've had a thirty three year
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  Speaker 4: career in law enforcement, serving as the police chief, of
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  Speaker 4: four and a half years in the laws in another
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  Speaker 4: four and a half years in Baltimore mail the police commissioner,
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  Speaker 4: and so I'm a policeman.
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  Speaker 3: Through and through.
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  Speaker 4: But there is such a thing as good policing, which
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  Speaker 4: is what I am committed to.
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  Speaker 1: And so I want you to listen to a portion
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  Speaker 1: of an interview that Harmy Dillon, the Assistant Attorney General, gave,
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  Speaker 1: and this is what she talks about the motivations of
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  Speaker 1: some of these consent decrees.
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  Speaker 2: When a city's under a consent decree, cops have to
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  Speaker 2: suddenly fill out reams of paperwork every day. Guess what
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  Speaker 2: they don't want to do that. They didn't become cops
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  Speaker 2: to sit there and do paperwork. So they quit, they retire,
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  Speaker 2: They moved to cities where they do want policing to
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  Speaker 2: be done. Effectively, crime goes up because criminals now know
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  Speaker 2: that the policing is not being done Axios did a
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  Speaker 2: review of cities under consent decrease, and I think one
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  Speaker 2: of the figures is crime went up by sixty one
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  Speaker 2: percent in Los Angeles County as a result after consent
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  Speaker 2: decrees were imposed on the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
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  Speaker 1: So that was a different soundbye, but let's roll with it.
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  Speaker 1: According to their analysis of FBI statistics, is Axios twenty
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  Speaker 1: twenty one report, violent crime dropped in some smaller cities
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  Speaker 1: like Ferguson, but two years after the consent decrease, violent
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  Speaker 1: crime rose sixty one percent in La County, thirty six
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  Speaker 1: percent in Albuquerque, twenty seven percent in Seattle, twenty percent
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  Speaker 1: in New Orleans, eleven percent in Baltimore. You know those
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  Speaker 1: last two cities. Well, why.
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  Speaker 4: Well, there are a lot of reasons why crime goes up,
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  Speaker 4: and police is only one part of public safety, and
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  Speaker 4: a lot has to go into making sure that police
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  Speaker 4: can deter crime, can prevent crime, can apprehend people who
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  Speaker 4: commit crime. I am living proof and the departments I've
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  Speaker 4: served then are living proof that we have debunked that
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  Speaker 4: myth that police reform and public safety and crime fighting
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  Speaker 4: go hand in hand, and they.
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  Speaker 3: Are not mutually exclusive.
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  Speaker 4: Yes, crime has gone up in a number of places,
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  Speaker 4: but in New Orleans under a federal consent decree. In
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  Speaker 4: my last year, crime had gone to historic lows. In
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  Speaker 4: the murder and shooting rate had gone to a fifty
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  Speaker 4: year low.
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  Speaker 3: In Baltimore.
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  Speaker 4: In my last two years, both violent crime and property
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  Speaker 4: crime went down. The murder rate there was in a
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  Speaker 4: historic low, and a year and a half after I left,
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  Speaker 4: it's still hitting historic lows while still under a consent decree.
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  Speaker 4: So that has been debunked twice that you cannot the
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  Speaker 4: myth that you cannot reform and effectively fight crime. They
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  Speaker 4: reform and crime fighting go hand in hand, and we
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  Speaker 4: have done both in both cities, and it has happened
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  Speaker 4: in other cities. So what you heard is someone with
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  Speaker 4: no experience in law enforcement repeating what they've heard from
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  Speaker 4: cops who are upset with reform.
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  Speaker 1: All Right, The Louisiana Attorney General says that the New
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  Speaker 1: Orleans consent decree coused more than one hundred and fifty
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  Speaker 1: million dollars over a decade. And as I'm sure you've heard,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: the cost related to hiring monitoring agencies and complying with
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  Speaker 1: the reforms is high. It should be secondary, of course,
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  Speaker 1: to the civil rights of the people that they are
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  Speaker 1: charged to protect and serve. But what's the rebuttal to
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  Speaker 1: the DOJ and to the Louisiana aj who says that
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  Speaker 1: these are so expensive that they become prohibitive.
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  Speaker 4: Well, they are expensive, but everything is expensive. I will
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  Speaker 4: tell you, having served twenty eight years in an almost
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  Speaker 4: police department, we could not have turned around that department
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  Speaker 4: without federal court mandates and federal oversight. We could not
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  Speaker 4: have turned the Baltimore Police Department around without that oversight.
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  Speaker 4: Regardless of how great intentions are in people's skill sets,
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  Speaker 4: we needed to have oversight and a court mandate to
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  Speaker 4: be able to do that. Now both departments are model departments.
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  Speaker 4: And if you look at other departments across the country
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  Speaker 4: who have gone through it, they too, are many times
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  Speaker 4: model departments. And we knew that we had participated in
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  Speaker 4: patterns and practices of unconstitutional policing. And it takes a
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  Speaker 4: cultural shift, a culture change. You can't just change policy, training, discipline, management, supervision.
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  Speaker 4: You have to actually do all of that together to
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  Speaker 4: change the culture. The way police officers take shifting from
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  Speaker 4: the warrior model to the guardian model because we are
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  Speaker 4: members of the community. We serve, so we have to
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  Speaker 4: do everything that either builds new relationships, improves good relationships,
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  Speaker 4: or repair broken relationship.
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  Speaker 1: What creators do you give the commitment from the city
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  Speaker 1: of Minneapolis and to Memphis right at the end of
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  Speaker 1: the Biden administration that refused to enter consent to create
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  Speaker 1: and said we're going to do it on our own.
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  Speaker 1: We can do it without the federal oversight, can they?
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  Speaker 3: Well, I can't speak for Memphis.
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  Speaker 4: I was a insults and hired by the Department of
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: Justice to work on that investigation for well over a year.
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  Speaker 3: Can't speak to that one.
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  Speaker 4: But what I can speak to is Minneapolis, where I
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  Speaker 4: co leead the independent evaluated team there. They have done
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  Speaker 4: great work and a lot of work this first Foundational year.
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  Speaker 4: The mayor has said, the city has said they intend
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  Speaker 4: to not only not only do the reforms that are
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  Speaker 4: required in the federal consent degree, by the way, which
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  Speaker 4: has been withdrawn, But Minneapolis, unlike many places, has a
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  Speaker 4: second one. It's actually under a state mandated settlement agreement
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  Speaker 4: or consent decree you can call it. That brought forth
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  Speaker 4: by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights and so that's
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  Speaker 4: a four year agreement that they are under, and so
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  Speaker 4: they are already one year into it. I've been monitoring
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  Speaker 4: with my team for one year. We have seen the
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  Speaker 4: work they've put into it. They are committed to the
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  Speaker 4: state settlement agreement, but the city is also said we're
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  Speaker 4: going to do the reforms outlined in the federal agreement,
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  Speaker 4: even though it has been withdrawn.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and these consent decrees have been entered into during
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  Speaker 1: the Biden administration, during the Obamba administration, not during the
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  Speaker 1: Trump administration. But as we move forward, if there are
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  Speaker 1: these incidents, I mean it seems as every time there
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  Speaker 1: is this punctuating moment of a Breonna Taylor or Tyree
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  Speaker 1: Nichols or George Floyd, the patterns and practice investigation happens
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  Speaker 1: during democratic administrations and the evidence of discrimination is found.
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  Speaker 1: And so the next time that happens, then then what
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  Speaker 1: happens to respond to a police department that there might
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  Speaker 1: be evidence, even at the state level, of something that
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  Speaker 1: needs to be remedied.
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  Speaker 4: Well, first of all, that's a great question. It's likely
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  Speaker 4: going to be either state attorney generals attorney's general to
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  Speaker 4: do those investigations when people file lawsuits at the request
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  Speaker 4: of communities who demand an investigation, or mayors will have
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  Speaker 4: to figure out how they're going to do that through
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  Speaker 4: private expert consultants who come in and do that work.
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  Speaker 4: While it may not be called an investigation, it's certainly
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  Speaker 4: an organizational assessment of what is broken and what needs
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  Speaker 4: to be corrected. And so there are two pathways as
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  Speaker 4: I see it, and mayors will have to figure that
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  Speaker 4: out either through their state attorney's general or private consultants
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  Speaker 4: who are experts in the field who do that work.
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  Speaker 1: All right, Michael Harrison, thank you so much for being
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: with me.
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  Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me